LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.' 

Chap. ._H 



Shelf 



,K S 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



7 



SOCIAL POLITICS. 



GLASGOW: 
PRINTED BY ALEX. M c DOUGALL, 
CO MITCHELL STREET. 



SOCIAL POLITICS 



GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



Professor KIRK, edinbukgh. 



INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE W. E. GLADSTONE, 




LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO. 
GLASGOW: THOMAS D. MORISON. 
1870. 

iT 



^0 

THE EIGHT HONOURABLE W. E. GLADSTONE, 

FIRST LORD' OF THE TREASURY. 

It is with a deep conviction, Right Honourable Sir, 
of your pre-eminent qualifications to occupy worthily, and 
to the great advantage of the British nation, the high 
official position to which by your merits you have been 
raised, that the writer of the following pages begs to 
inscribe them to you. Whatever may be the opinion 
which you may be led to entertain of the views 
propounded, their drift is so nearly in the direction of 
a policy to which your life seems devoted, that they 
are hopefully placed in your hands by, 

Right Honourable Sir, 

Your most obedient Servant, 

THE AUTHOR. 



A 2 



PEEFACE. 



Among the last things in a book which have to 
be written is the Preface ; but it should be among 
the first to be read. It is like the few words with 
which an apt chairman oj)ens the way for a stranger 
who is about to address the audience over which he 
presides; only, it usually consists of words addressed 
by the author himself, and not by another. 

Our desire in this preface is to give the reader 
some idea of what he will find if he carefully peruses 
the volume. He will first of all have a brief glance 
at the more important features of the vast wealth to 
be found in the resources of this great and united 
kingdom. He will then be led to look at the 
amazing inequality with which this great wealth is 
distributed — the riches and the poverty of the land. 
He will be invited also to consider at some length 
the relation of the population to the resources of 
the country, so that the now crowded and dying 
masses may be seen in the mind's eye where they 
ought to be in reality. He will be urged to ponder 
the momentous question as to how crowding and 



viii 



Preface. 



death, with all the attendants of a terrible poverty, 
prevail in a land which is capable of sustaining 
twice its present population ; and he will be urged 
also to ponder the remedies that may be applied 
to the present state of things. 

It may be well to tell him that he will not find 
the now familiar arguments urged in favour of 
" teetotalism/' because the book is strictly political 
and not personal. From beginning to end he will 
find himself among " politics'' strictly so-called. This 
is not because these politics are truly separable 
from the physiological, moral, and religious aspects 
of the great drink system, with its kindred tobacco 
traffic ; but because it seems to the author that men 
need to have their minds directed above all to 
the great principles of political existence, in the 
present state of the British Empire. 

Headed by the admirable Alliance, we have a 
marvellous staff of workers in reform in the 
United Kingdom, and the author ventures to 
hope that he may be useful in the way of laying 
such facts to hand, at least for some of these, 
as may help them in their great work. He has 
found in other days that the truth, startling 
and strange at first sight, has become gradually 
the accepted faith even of those who could regard 



Preface. 



ix 



it as only extravagance for a time. He will not be 
disappointed if this should be repeated in relation 
to more than one of the statements and calculations 
of the present volume. 

The reader will find the remedies suggested, both 
by working men and by others, discussed in the 
latter part of the volume. The subject of emigra- 
tion, together with that of lessening production, 
and several kindred ideas, fall to be earnestly 
considered in the present state of our country. 
We are fast losing that place in the world in 
which our advantages have excelled those of other 
States. Especially in North America, communities 
are rapidly rising to a position in which we shall 
be no longer able to compete with them in the 
world's market, if our deteriorating processes go 
on. And the working millions have need specially 
to consider the truth that bears on this prospect. 

The astounding effect of fifteen years' restriction 
of our liquor system, chiefly by high duties, will 
not fail to interest the reformer as he comes near 
the close of the volume. These remedial measures 
have just doubled the impoverishing drain of 
money from the lower orders to the higher, so far 
.as spirits are concerned. They have added more 
than £20,000,000 to the liquor bill of the toiling 



x Preface. 

masses. It is to be hoped that the discussion of 
such facts will lead to further investigation and 
to greater light; and that the now numerous 
constituency of this great nation will be led to 
rouse itself to the work of full deliverance. Let 
all be assured that no time must be lost if we 
are ever to rise as a people to our proper place 
among the nations. 

J. K. 



Edinburgh, April, 1870. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter Page 

I. — Extent of Surface, 1 

II. — Fisheries, ....... 4 

III. — Agriculture, .7 

IV. — Mines and Quarries, . . . . . 9 
V. — Manufactures, 11 

VI. — Commerce, . . . . . . . 14 

VII. — Property, 17 

VIII.— Population, . . . . . . 20 

IX. — Intelligence, 23 

X. — Distribution of Wealth, .... 28 

XL — Employment of Income, 31 

XII. — Distribution of Land, 35 

XIII. — The Position of Farmers, . . . .39 

XIV. — Population of the Seaboard, ... 42 
XV. — Population on Fresh "Waters, s . . .47 

XVI. — Unproductive Surface, 51 

XVII. — A Grazing Population, 56 

XVIII. — Our Agricultural Population, . . . 61 

XIX. — Where are the People? 65 

XX. — Crowding and Death, 72 

XXL — Land and Liquor, 77 

XXII. — Disastrous Exchange, 81 

XXIII. — Wages, Drink, and Tobacco, .... 91 

XXIV. — Improvidence, 97 

XXV.— Money and Land, 102 



xii Contents. 

Chapter Paget 

XXVI. — Incidence of Taxation, . . . .108 

XXVII.— Emigration, 112 

XXVIII. — Diminishing Force, . . . . .119 

XXIX. — Lessening Production, . . . . 132 

XXX. — " Cheapening Labour," 144 

XXXI. — Who is to Blame ? 156 

XXX1L— What is to be Done ? . . . . .162 

XXXIIL— Owners' Eights, 166 

XXXIV. — Occupiers' Rights, 172 

XXXV. — Palliative Measures, . . . . 184 
XXXVL— The Duty oe Working Men, . . .19a 



SOCIAL POLITICS. 



CHAPTER L 
EXTENT OF SUKFACE. 

To know any country it is well to consider it first 
as a portion of the habitable surface of the globe. 
Its extent and character come thus before us as 
primary elements in all calculations that can be made 
as to its capabilities in relation to that portion of 
the human race which is, or may be, its population. 

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 
embraces not only the dry land of all the islands 
which go to constitute the terra firma of our native 
land, together with all its inland waters, but also that 
portion of the sea which is embraced by a line drawn 
at a distance of three miles beyond low water mark 
from its coasts. " British waters " are as important 
in view of the very sustenance of the people, as is 
the best of British land, and they are just as sacredly 
guarded. 

In estimating the extent of the country we must 
therefore take into account these three miles of ocean 
all round. We begin three miles north of the farthest 

B 



2 



Social Politics. 



of the Shetlands, and measure to three miles south of 
the Lizard. That is about 785 statute miles. Then we 
take from three miles east of Yarmouth across to the 
same distance west of the Blaskets, on the farthest 
point of Ireland. That is a distance of 535 miles. We 
have thus the greatest length, and the greatest 
breadth of that portion of the earth's surface on 
which about thirty millions of men, women, and 
children at present have their home. A right angled 
triangle whose base is 500 miles and whose perpen- 
dicular is 700 would represent this extent of surface 
exactly enough for our present purpose. This 
would give us 175,000 square miles of sea and land 
together as the full extent of our country. 

It is necessary to include this wide area, in order 
to have a correct view of the United Kingdom, 
because of the character of the surface. No part of 
the space we have embraced in our estimate is use- 
less. The great channels which are included are 
the now crowded ways by which our commerce is 
constantly passing. The fresh water lakes that 
occupy so much surface, especially in Scotland, are 
available as reservoirs of the greatest importance. 
Witness Loch Katrine and the city of Glasgow, 
now so copiously supplied from it; and the vast 
capabilities of the water power yet unused in the 
case of other sheets of water. Even the highest 
mountain tops, as they arrest and condense the 
clouds, and send down a fertile irrigation for the 
valleys and plains, have the highest material value. 



Extent of Surface. 



3 



The three miles of ocean all round our coasts are not 
only rich in harbourage, but also fall of fish, and so 
capable of supplying human wants — even more 
abundantly than the best of the land. But all this 
will appear much more fully as we go on to con- 
sider the resources of the kingdom. It is when we 
take up these with care, so as to form a full idea of 
the capabilities of the country, that we are enabled 
to understand the wondrous value of that variety 
of surface which characterizes the islands in which 
we live. It is not so much the arable land of a 
country that accounts for its richness, as that con- 
formation and character above ground and below 
ground which accounts for land being arable, 
which makes its crops highly valuable, and affords 
means of easy interchange between its various dis- 
tricts, and also with other trading countries. 



4 



CHAPTER II. 
FISHERIES. 

We have only to glance at the imperfect statistics 
of our fisheries in order to see the importance of that 
three-mile belt of ocean which is embraced in our 
country's surface as " British waters." Some idea of 
the value of the food which is at present derived from 
this source may be gathered from the number of 
men and boys employed in the fisheries of Scotland 
and the Isle of Man, say in 1867. They amounted to 
46,219, manning altogether 14,208 boats of various 
classes. Though this vast army of fishers do not live 
altogether by fishing, they depend in great measure 
for their support during the year on what they 
gain during the fishing season. Some additional 
idea may be got from the number of men and boats 
employed in the Irish fisheries, say in 1846. We 
select this year because it represents what was 
actually reached on the coast of Ireland before the 
fatal famine, by which the productive power was so 
dreadfully lowered. The number of men and boys 
employed in Irish fisheries in that year was 113,073, 
and the boats amounted to 19,883. In 1866 the 
men and boys had fallen to 40,663, and the boats to 
9,444 ! The capabilities of the fisheries had not 
lessened, but rather increased. We have therefore 



Fisheries. 



5 



in these two statements the actual employment of 
159,292 men and boys, involving a very much larger 
number of women, children, and persons ministering 
to the wants of fishermen and their families, all to 
a great extent sustained from our coast fisheries in 
Scotland, with the Isle of Man, and Ireland alone. 
But this gives us no adequate view of the resources 
of even Scotch and Irish waters. The Select 
Committee that sat in 1867 on " Irish fisheries " state 
their belief that these, like others, might be developed 
to a very large extent " beyond their present rate of 
produce." * 

The most important paper which we have on the 
fisheries of the United Kingdom is probably the 
Report of the Royal Commission which is dated in 
1866. These Commissioners say, — " The produce of 
the sea around our coasts bears a far higher propor- 
tion to that of the land than is generally imagined. 
The most frequented fishing grounds are much more 
prolific of food than the same extent of the richest 
land. Once in the year an acre of good land care- 
fully tilled produces a ton of corn, or two hundred- 
weight or three hundredweight of meat or cheese. 
The same area, at the bottom of the sea, on the best 
fishing grounds, yields a greater weight of food to 
the persevering fisherman every week in the year. 
Five vessels belonging; to the same owner, in a 
single night's fishing, brought in 17 tons weight of 
fish, an amount of wholesome food equal to that of 
* Parliamentary paper 443, 1867. 



6 



Social Politics, 



50 cattle or 300 sheep. The ground which these 
vessels covered could not have exceeded an area of 
50 acres." * 

It is not easy to get any exact idea of the produce 
of our fisheries, especially on the English coast. 
Yast quantities are caught and sold of which no 
record of any kind is taken. But the quantities 
passing over the railways are such as to give a very 
large amount as the probable sum of all that are 
caught. In 1864, the fish passing over twelve of 
our chief railways weighed 122,381 tons — that is, 
equal to above 5,000,000 sheep. About 1,000 sail, 
together with the railways, are employed in sup- 
plying London alone with above 80,000 tons of 
fish annually. Though we have no means of 
forming an exact estimate of the quantity of food 
thus brought to us from the sea, we have means 
enough to give us the conviction that it is capable 
of feeding a large portion of the people; besides, 
it might be doubled, or as one witness before the 
Commissioners said, it might be easily " trebled." 

* See Report of the Commissioners appointed to enquire into 
the Sea Fisheries of the United Kingdom, 1866, p. xvii. 



7 



CHAPTER III. 
AGRICULTURE. 

When we come on the dry land and look at its 
capabilities, it is natural first to consider the bread 
and meat produced in agriculture. The total acreage 
of Great Britain and Ireland, including the Channel 
Islands, is given by authority of Government at 
77,513,000 statute acres. The portion of this under 
crops and grass is stated at 45,652,545 acres.* This 
gives about an acre and a-half for every soul of the 
population, — and that of actually productive land. 
That is, suppose we had no fisheries, nor any other 
resources, and had to live on the produce of the land 
alone, without taking in an acre of that which now 
lies waste (much of which is reclaimable), we have 
an acre and a-half of productive soil for each indi- 
vidual of the people. How does this look beside the 
statements of those who cry out for emigration, 
because these islands are too strait for us ? We may 
look first at the cattle, sheep, and pigs on this acre- 
age in 1868, as we have them authoritatively stated. 
The cattle amounted to 9,083,416, — the sheep were 
35,607,812— the pigs were 3,189,167. Put sheep 
on the grass now unhappily given up to deer, and 
make that of the waste land which an indus- 
trious and frugal people will easily make of it, and 
* Agricultural Returns for 186S. 



8 



Social Politics. 



these cattle of all sorts will be easily increased ; but 
take the quantities as they stand, and how do they 
look side by side with famishing thousands for whom 
it is now clamoured that they be sent out of the land ? 
One acre of good corn land will grow bread enough 
for five men. In 1868 there were 11,659,855 acres 
under corn crops, and they must have borne bread 
enough for 58,299,275 persons of full grown eating 
power ! How then comes scarcity of bread % In 
asking this question we are keeping out of sight a 
vast quantity of good grain that came to us from 
other countries. At present we speak only of the re- 
sources of our own country, in order that we may lay 
the foundation on which to consider its social politics. 
When we look at our food supplies as these actually 
come to us from the hand of a bountiful Providence, 
and see that there must be more than enough in the 
land for man and for beast, it does seem a tremendous 
question how so many are perishing for want. 

But we have not only food supplies. Thirty-four 
millions of sheep imply a vast amount of wool as 
well as food. They give more than a fleece for every 
man, woman, and child of the whole population. How 
is it that so many thousands are naked, so far as 
decent rags even are concerned ? We have not yet 
come to commerce, and so look not at the vast sum 
of other clothing materials that reaches us by sea 
from other lands. It is the resources of our own 
land we are estimating, and yet we find food and 
clothing enough for the entire people ! 



9 



CHAPTER IV. 
MINES AND QUARRIES. 

Having looked at the fisheries and agriculture 
as sources of supply we naturally go beneath the sur- 
face and consider the mining wealth of this rich 
country. Here it is that we get not only our own 
supply of minerals and metals, but that enormous 
power that brings to so large an extent the supplies 
of other lands to our shores. But for our coal and 
iron enabling us to export to so large an extent, we 
could not possibly import as we do of the food, 
clothing, and other comforts produced by other 
peoples. It is when we come to our mining capabili- 
ties that we approach the sources from which a por- 
tion of the people now draw, not their sustenance, but 
the means of an extravagance almost unparalleled. 
The value of our entire produce from mines in 1867, 
at the place of production, amounted to £41,183,158. 

This is the value of the coals and ore alone, before 
any process of manufacture has added to their worth, 
and is a very large sum indeed. As our great 
export shows, it is vastly beyond the consumption 
of the population of this country; and proves that, 
so far as fuel and metals for all needful purposes are 
concerned, these islands have far more than resources 
enough for double their people as they now stand. 



10 



Social Politics. 



These mineral statistics, too, leave out of sight 
the enormous quantities of stone and slate for 
building purposes that are produced annually in 
the United Kingdom, together with the great 
amount of building of all sorts actually accom- 
plished. In 1867 there were 664,498 houses 
assessed for house tax, at a rental of £32,737,771. 
That was nearly a million sterling above the 
rental of 1866, and that again was more than 
two millions above the annual value of the houses 
assessed in 1865. A similar increase in the value 
of house property is now going on, as the result 
of the great productive power of the people ; and 
yet, in spite of all this amazing output of mineral 
and material wealth from under the surface of 
the land on which we live, and also this great 
amount of actual house building in one year, the 
want of houses to shelter them, on the part of 
thousands on thousands of the population, is truly 
overwhelming. If we put the value of minerals 
and rent of buildings together, we have the vast 
aggregate of £73,920,929 as an addition to the 
wealth of the people, in one year, from these two 
sources alone; and that is leaving out of sight the 
value of all those houses that do not fall within 
the assessable limit. That additional income from 
mines and buildings alone is above £2, 10s. for 
every soul in the population. It is equal to £15 
a year for fuel and house room for every family 
of six, and that is no mean supply. 



11 



CHAPTER V. 

MANUFACTURES. 

What we have said of the fisheries, the bread 
growing, the cattle raising, with the mines and 
dwellings of the United Kingdom, is more than 
sufficient to show the full adequacy of the country 
itself to supply the population with food, clothing, 
fuel, and dwellings, and also with the raw material 
of most important manufactures. Keeping out 
of sight altogether its being a sort of " workshop 
of the world," as some are fond of calling 
Great Britain especially, it is clearly capable of 
being a well-supplied workshop for its own people, 
even if they were double their present number, and 
had nothing to send off to other countries. In the 
manufacture of fabrics for the clothing of the 
people, no less than 857,964 persons were employed 
in 1868. In steam power there was that of 337,851 
horses, and in water power that of 29,830. This 
power was turning no less than 41,516,484 spindles; 
that is, leaving out 2,975,231 doubling spindles, 
and stating the spinning ones alone. There were 
549,365 powerlooms also at work. If each of 
these looms were sufficient to weave for sixty 
persons only, we should have more than weaving 
power for the whole population; yet that would be 



12 



Social Politics. 



ridiculously below the capacity of such a machine. 
Altogether, there were not less than 3,416,253 
persons engaged in producing clothing, even in 
1861, when the population was under what it was 
in 1868. This is clear from the census. "With 
such a power of cloth and clothes-making, it does 
seem incomprehensible that millions of the people 
should be, as nearly as possible, absolutely destitute 
of suitable covering. Yet so they are. 

Our manufacturing capabilities, however, are 
not at all exhausted by efforts to clothe mankind. 
When we have further recourse to the census of 1861, 
we find that, independently of our fishermen, our 
agriculturists, and those occupied in manufacturing 
textile materials and clothing, we had in the United 
Kingdom 3,415,938 persons actually engaged in 
adding to the wealth of the community by other 
industrial processes. A portion of this multitude 
are anticipated by implication in our chapter on 
mines and dwellings ; but all the vast numbers em- 
ployed in iron manufacture, and in the entire metallic 
system by which our national income is so largely 
increased, are over and above all who are engaged in 
finding the raw material merely. The vast machinery 
implied in our railroad system, and in all else by 
which metals are made to serve us, form part of this 
huge army of productive persons. We have no 
means of estimating exactly the sum of wealth thus 
created every year ; but, as in the case of the fish- 
eries, we have enough to satisfy any one, who thinks 



Manufactures. 



13 



on the subject, that it must be very great indeed. 
And yet, for actual want, tens of thousands desire 
to flee the country for ever ! 

It is one of the most interesting questions that 
can engage a thoughtful mind at the present hour, 
how vast numbers of warehouses are full of cloth, 
and vast numbers of pawnbroking establishments 
full of clothes, while so many thousands of the 
people are nearly as badly off for dress as if we 
were a nation of savages. It is greatly for the pur- 
pose of stirring up such a question that we thus 
state our country's resources in this and in other 
respects. Let every reader be sure that the answer 
is as interesting as is the question. 



14 



CHAPTER VI. 

COMMERCE. 

If we take as an illustration one of those families, 
partly agricultural, and partly manufacturing, such 
as we have had in greater numbers than now in 
various parts of our country, it will aid us in seeing 
how commerce affects a nation. Such a family is 
capable of raising the greater part of its own food, 
fuel, clothing, and house-room, — at the same time of 
manufacturing a considerable amount of what is 
needed to supply the wants of families at a distance. 
Its members have to go forth for raw materials, to 
some extent, on which to exercise their skill ; but 
they soon carry forth goods of much greater value, 
and bring home either other goods which they want, 
or money, by which they gradually become " capital- 
ists," and are able to increase their productive powers 
in various ways. Such a family is a nation in minia- 
ture ; and it is easy to see that if the balance in cash 
which they are annually able to bring home is con- 
siderable, they must be in a very good way. If it 
should be so, and any of their productive members 
are in destitution, there must be something sadly 
■wrong in that family. In 1868 our merchants were 
able to send away goods to the value of £227,588,663; 
but they were able to bring home goods to the value 



Commerce. 



15 



of £295,511,566. That shows an increase of wealth 
by a balance of £67,922,903. There is a most im- 
portant consideration that might fall to be expressed 
here; but we leave it for another chapter, and take 
the figures as they stand before us, for they correctly 
enough show the power in the nation to increase 
real wealth as represented by money value. As a 
people, and that in a very feeble state of trade, 
we are able to increase the real wealth of the 
nation by £67,922,903 in one twelvemonth's time. 
Nor is this all. We send out gold and silver as 
well as goods, and receive gold and silver as well 
as goods in our import trade. In 1868 we sent 
out £20,220,014 in coin; but we brought back 
£24,852,595. That made us richer by the sum of 
£4,632,531 in gold and silver, as we were £67,922,903 
richer in goods of value. That is, £72,555,434 fairly 
earned by the industrial and trading energy of the 
people, thousands of whom are in such poverty that 
the rest do not know how to dispose of them ! 

This vast sum is not reduced by the expense 
of transit, in which we maintain a commercial 
marine unequalled in the world, because the value 
of our exports is not that which they will bear 
after they have been carried to their destination, 
but that at which they would sell at the port from 
which they go. The value of our imports is not 
that at which they are bought at the places from 
whence they came, but the price at which they will 
sell when landed at our own Custom Houses. The 



16 



Social Politics. 



shipper is paid out of the balance which we find 
by comparing the price of his cargo at the port 
at which he ships it and its higher value at the port 
at which he delivers it. The vast property accu- 
mulated in shipping, is all in addition to that 
which is accumulated by foreign trade, whose 
profits are represented by the sum we have just 
put before our* readers ; and surely it does urge 
the question upon us, as to how a nation able to 
win such a sum in commerce in one year, can be 
the prey of devouring pauperism. Such a question 
must be pressed until the masses in the community 
shall have got full hold of its true answer. Beyond 
all doubt our wealth and our poverty are both 
increasing. The seeming contradiction can be 
explained; and the people must be made to under- 
stand the explanation. 



17 



CHAPTER VII. 

PROPERTY. 

In the actual produce of a country, we see its 
resources in one of their most important aspects; 
but there is an equally important aspect seen in its 
accumulated wealth. We have looked at the 
annual addition made to the dwellings of the 
population in connection with our mines and 
quarries, but we see the matter in another and 
more forcible view when we consider the value of 
all which we now possess as available property. 
A people might be able to bring a great deal 
of actual food from the waters and from the land, 
and also to produce a large amount of useful 
materials from its mines, and yet have very little 
actual property on the strength of which to extend 
its productive power. We look, therefore, with 
deep interest to the estimated value of the property 
of the United Kingdom. 

One interesting way of reaching an idea of the 
property of this country, is by means of the Insu- 
rance effected upon it. This does not give us its 
actual value, because much valuable property is 
not insured. Yet in the year 1867 there was the 
enormous sum of £1,365,325,000 insured upon 
property in the United Kingdom. That would 

c 



18 



Social Politics. 



give above £45 in insured property to every man, 
woman, and child in the country. It would be 
above £270 to every family of six persons. 

This, however, does not give us anything like an 
adequate idea of the property of the Kingdom. A 
vast amount of that is not insured at all. Land 
needs no insurance, and in the year ending 5 th April, 
1867, income tax was charged on the annual value 
of this kind of property rated at £125,249,705. The 
actual value of this cannot be under twenty years' 
purchase, which would be £2,504,994,100, or above 
£84 a head for the whole population. That added 
to the £45 would give £129 to each, and to every 
family of father, mother, and four children no less 
than £774 in property. That is, counting only such' 
valuable accumulations as are deemed worthy of 
insurance, and the land, which does not need it, we 
have as much as would place every family in these 
realms in a position of comfort,- so far as actual pro- 
perty is concerned. 

We must, however, take in the accumulated 
capital which is found in the form of money. This 
is not in any way included in the insured property, 
and is wealth distinct from the land. If we take the 
gold held by the Bank of England, say in December, 
1867, it was £20,603,285. The amount of coin held 
by Scotch and Irish banks at the same date was 
£5,509,516. These, together with coin held by the 
country banks in England, represent a very consider- 
able amount of this medium of exchange with all the 



Property. 



19 



-world in the possession of the nation, though it seems 
a small sum when compared with the enormity of 
the transactions in which it plays an important part. 
There is, then, in addition to all this, the silver and 
gold in actual circulation, of which it is not easy to 
form anything like an accurate estimate. 

We have now placed beyond all doubt that it is 
neither want of space, nor of resources, nor of pro- 
perty sufficient for its population, which is making 
it necessary to ship off tens of thousands of the people 
who are starving and dying for lack of room in which 
to breathe within the United Kingdom. He who 
ponders the statements we have laid before the 
readers of these pages will be in no danger of falling 
into the too prevalent error of thinking that the 
population has outgrown the country and its capa- 
bilities. He who desires five or ten times the space 
belonging to him as his proper share, cries out that 
the carriage is "full" long before its half is really 
occupied ; but he must wish fifty times at least what 
he needs who would crowd out his fellow-creatures 
from a country like this, situated as we are now. 



20 



CHAPTER VIII. 
POPULATION. 

The number of souls in the United Kingdom in 1861, 
as found by the census of that year, was 29,070,932. 
The estimated number in 1867 was 30,157,473. If 
we take the large surface of sea and land fairly 
included in the space to which this aggregate be- 
longs it gives us about 172 for each square mile. 
We mention this large surface, because, though men 
do not live on the water in this country as they do 
in China, were the fisheries worked to the extent 
of which they are capable, and our commerce equally 
developed, there would be a vastly greater number 
supported by the produce of the sea than could be 
by that of a similar surface on the land. The 
Report of the Royal Commission on our coast fish- 
eries, already referred to, makes this abundantly 
evident. As to the land, even to the tops of the 
highest mountains, it is equal one way or other to 
the support of this number of persons to the square 
mile. It is capable of improvement such as would 
double its present produce, even in the most bleak 
localities. 

But when we turn attention to the population, it 
is not to their proportion in numbers to the extent of 
surface so much as to their capabilities fitting them 



Population. 



21 



to deal with that surface effectively. It is when we 
take the number of grown men above twenty years 
of age, each individual of whom is capable of pro- 
ducing all necessaries and comforts for at least six 
other persons on an average, that we see somewhat 
of the capabilities of a people. In England, in 1861, 
there were 5,230,573 men above twenty years of age. 
In Scotland 737,974. In Ireland age would seem 
of no account, as the census does not take it up, 
absurdly giving " religious profession " instead ; but 
there were 1,844,793 men engaged in various " occu- 
pations, " among whom " peers" and " bill-stickers" 
are put together, with an amusing variety besides* 
That gives altogether 7,813,340 capable men for the 
United Kingdom. There is no deduction required 
for age which is not more than made up by the 
efficiency of youth. Were these men capable of 
earning ten shillings a week, on an average, during 
fifty weeks each year, their savings would amount to 
£195,333,500. All will admit that this is putting the 
capabilities of the men exceedingly low, even when 
we take in all in Ireland employed below twenty 
years of age. There are more than half as many 
women employed in actual labour — for which they 
are receiving wages — as there are men ; showing that 
the capability of the population is at least a half 
above that at which we arrive when estimating from 
the men only. This would add a half to the 
above yearly sum. That gives the large amount of 
* See Census of Ireland 1861, p. 724. 



22 



Social Politics. 



£293,000,250 as the easily reached result of produc- 
tive work by such a people as that of these realms. 
But twenty shillings for the men, and ten for the 
women, would be a low average, if our estimate 
were founded on actual wages now received, taking 
in all occupations, high and low. That would be 
very far indeed below the actual value of the pro- 
duce of labour resulting from the exertions of per- 
sons actually employed. We safely assert that the 
working strength of the entire people of this country 
(excluding, as the census does, the army, navy, and 
all merchant seamen abroad) is equal to an annual 
wage, on a fairly co-operative system, of not less 
than £500,000,000. That is, as near as may be, 
£20 a head for the entire population. That is, £120 
a year to every family of six, as the product of 
labour alone. There is something terribly wrong 
when such a people are beggared by the ten 
thousand, and shipped off in starvation to other 
lands. 



23 



CHAPTER IX. 
INTELLIGENCE. 

The great excitement at present apparent among 
certain classes, on the subject of "education/' makes 
it specially important to look at the provision made 
for promoting the intelligence of the people, together 
with the measure in which that provision is ac- 
cepted. One would be led to think that the popu- 
lation, whose resources and capabilities we have 
been pointing out in foregoing chapters, are semi- 
savages, and, from their ignorance of grammar and 
syntax, incapable of bringing their own bread from 
the soil. Some sort of law by which schools and 
teachers may be mdeflnitely increased in number 
and efficiency is spoken of as if it were the one 
want of the age. Many who will not consider the 
real cause of our social misery for a moment, will 
talk any length of time on the subject of education. 
Let us see, then, how this matter stands. 

We shall begin with Ireland, where matters, in 
this as in other respects, are at the worst. It is in 
that beautiful country that the scourge of poverty 
has fallen first and most heavily; and it is from it 
that the tide of exile has flowed first and strongest. 
How is Ireland for schools ? On the 31st December, 
1867, there were 6,520 "National" schools in opera- 



24 



Social Politics. 



tion in Ireland. Besides these there were 3,820 
"Mixed" schools, — that is, altogether, 10,340 schools 
for Ireland alone, 1 and that by no means including 
all the schools in the country. The children on 
the rolls of these schools at the date mentioned 
numbered 1,444,850. That is, very nearly 25 per 
cent, of the whole population of Ireland on the roll 
of its primary schools. The average attendance 
shows an urgent need for some means of making 
those on the roll really attend at school. It was 
only 321,683 ; but the school room and number of 
teachers are more than sufficient for the larger num- 
ber of scholars, as shown by the rolls. If we take 
the best educated county of Scotland, in 1861, so far 
as numbers at school are concerned, it was that 
of Clackmannan, and had only 18*2 per cent, of 
scholars to the population. From what we know 
of that county, we believe there was scarcely a child, 
whose attendance at school was really desirable, 
who was not actually attending. This gives us 
some idea of the absurdity of crying out for more 
means of " education," at least so far as Ireland is 
concerned. Looking to the census, we see that, in 
1861, there were no less than 40,853 persons in Ire- 
land " ministering to literature and education," — 
that is exclusive of 10,627 who were "ministering 
to religion;" — that was 51,480 who were actually 
devoted to the enlightenment of the population. 
He is no statesman who does not consider that 
doverty may arise from an extreme in the number 



Intelligence. 



25 



of men and women taken from productive toil, such 
as increases the food of the people, and given up to 
work for the mind and spirit alone; nor can his 
mental vision be very clear who does not see that 
such an extreme is already having its bad effect in 
Ireland. Instead of more effective persons drawn 
off from material industry, it may be necessary to 
send back a good many to it who now live on the 
produce of others' hands. 

Now we come to Scotland, as the next poorest of 
the " three kingdoms/' If we confine attention at 
first to the " inspected schools," we had, in 1867, 
among an " agricultural people," 740 schools, with 
769 certified teachers, aided by 344 pupil teachers, 
attended by 41,191 scholars as average attendance. 
Among " non-agricultural" people we had 550 schools, 
with 871 certified teachers, 1,314 pupil teachers, and 
96,317 as the average number of scholars in atten- 
dance. Among a " mixed" population we had 383 
schools, 461 certified teachers, 499 pupil teachers, 
and 38,086 scholars as the average attendance. These 
are "schools aided with annual grants," and these 
alone, yet they number 1,673, with 4,258 persons 
actually teaching 172,594 children in average atten- 
dance. The number actually present at examination 
was 181,572. There was accommodation in the 
schools in which these children were taught for 
234,146 pupils. If we were to confine attention to 
primary schools — that is, schools for teaching the 
elements of a good plain education — we have 



26 



Social Politics. 



abundance for the whole people, so far as numbers 
of rooms and teachers are concerned. 

But, to show how far the inspected schools of this 
aided class fall short of the total number in Scotland, 
we have only to refer to the census of 1851, where 
we find that the number of schools in Scotland was, 
even then, 5,242. We have not the number in 1861, 
as that was not given in the census of that year; 
but we know that the number has increased at a 
rate greatly beyond that of the increase in popula- 
tion. In 1861, " 467,056 persons were 'tabulated' 
as scholars." * The entire population was then only 
3,062,294. As much as 15*2 per cent., or one in 
every 6*5 persons, was receiving education at that 
date. Taken from the age of five to that of fifteen, the 
young of the whole country then amounted to only 
685,912. There were then 12,456 persons who were 
entered in the census returns as " teachers," and 
hence, so far as both these and schools were con- 
cerned, there could and there can be no lack of the 
agencies of education in Scotland. 

We come last, on this subject, to England, which 
has been making vast strides in education during' 
the last ten years. In 1861 there were 110,364 per- 
sons " tabulated" as teachers. There were 3,150,048 
described as scholars. That was in a population 
amounting altogether to 20,066,224. The entire 
number given, as from five to fifteen years of age, is 
4,449,242 ; and hence there was not so very great a 
* See Census, page Hi. 



Intelligence. 



27 



lack of scholars in England, in proportion to the 
population, of an age where school is strictly the pro- 
per thing. Before five and after fourteen, as a rule for 
the great mass of the young in a country, it is ex- 
tremely doubtful as to its being very desirable that 
a child should be at school. If our social state were 
as it should be, our children should have true child- 
hood till five, and they might quite well learn some- 
thing beyond school at fourteen. As we have said, the 
zeal exerted in the cause of education in England has 
done great things in the way of schools and teachers 
since 1861, and consequently the provision made has 
been greatly increased. There is no doubt great 
lack of a good education still in a considerable num- 
ber of English youths, but it is not for want of means 
and agencies, but for lack of some compulsion strong 
enough to secure that sufficient use shall be made of 
the means and agencies existing in abundance. 

This at least is certain, that if we take anything 
like a fair view of the education provided in these 
three kingdoms, and also of the degree to which the 
people are actually educated, it is impossible to 
conclude that the vast misery existing in the midst 
of resources like ours can be accounted for by lack 
of education. It will be equally impossible to con- 
vince ourselves that any increase of schools and 
schoolmasters will remedy that evil which is driving 
the very choice of our productive strength from our 
shores into a forced exile. 



28 



CHAPTER X. 

DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 

As we glance at the several resources of the United 
Kingdom, we are constrained to ask, how it really 
is that a great portion of the people are in helpless 
poverty, and so large a portion of them compelled 
to leave their native land? We approach the answer 
to these questions when we begin to inquire as to 
the distribution of property. In Frederick Martin's 
Year Book for Statesmen/" issued on the 1st of 
January, 1870, we find an estimate of the three 
classes into which the community are divided in 
this country. The " upper class," or " owners of 
property and their families," are stated at 1,000,000. 
The " middle class" — "traders and brain- workers" — 
are stated at 6,000,000. The "lower," or "manual 
labourers," are 23,000,000. We are disposed to 
regard this estimate of what is strictly called the 
"upper class" (that is, of those who have property 
or income of sufficient amount to raise them above 
labour with either brain or hand), as a good way 
above the truth. The number of those who paid 
income tax on incomes at and above £400 a year 
from "trades and professions," was 48,735 in 1867. 
Those deriving above £400 a year from public 
* The Statesman's Year Bool', 1870. 



Distribution of Wealth. 



29 



offices, &c, was 10,400. Those having income 
derived from the public funds were only 4,014, 
including all entitled to sums above £300. Taking 
all these put together, we have only 63,149. The 
entire " landholder" class is only 42,153. From this 
it would be necessary to deduct a great deal more 
than two-thirds, in view of holders of quantities 
of land far too small to place them among the 
" upper class;" but even if we were to include 
them all, it would give us an aggregate of 105,302 
only. If each of these represented a family of five, 
it would be but 526,510 persons, instead of a million. 
In the matter of income tax, 67 persons were 
charged on an aggregate income of £5,860,321. 
There were 852 persons charged on £15,181,293. 
In the matter of " armorial bearings," which are all 
but universal among the truly " upper class," there 
were only 57,541 persons charged. In the presence 
of facts like these, and others that might be added 
to them, it is very difficult indeed to estimate the 
truly "upper class" at half a million. 

And yet, if we take the estimate of the Year 
Book, we have £600,000,000 stated as the annual 
income of the country. £350,000,000 is divided 
among 7,000,000, and only £250,000,000 among 
23,000,000. That gives £100,000,000 more to 
7,000,000 souls than is given to 23,000,000. That 
is £50 a head to the wealthier, and only a frac- 
tion above £10, 17s. a head to the poorer. This 
itself would call for inquiry as to the reason of so 



so 



Social Politics. 



wide a divergence, but it is vastly under the truth 
as a statement of the real distribution of income. 
And yet there are far more serious aspects than this 
of the division of wealth among the people. If this 
division were near the truth — the result of "fair 
play/' — and were there no dreadful scourge of poverty 
threatening the community — driving thousands into 
exile, and thousands more into a premature grave — 
it would be a work of supererogation to state the 
case. But when the statement is far below the 
truth, and the evil is the result of the foulest play, — 
as we shall show, — when it is actually depopulating 
these realms, it is the imperative duty of every man 
capable of thought to inquire into the causes of the 
extreme wealth on the one hand, and the extreme 
poverty on the other. 



31 



CHAPTEK XL 
EMPLOYMENT OF INCOME. 



There are instances in which wealth becomes 
accumulated in the hands of those who employ it for 
the general good. There are very serious facts which 
lead us to the conclusion that these instances are too 
rare. These facts are nowhere more strongly seen 
than in our foreign trade. Take, for example, that 
of the United States and France as most striking. 
In 1868, we imported from the United States no less 
than £8,892,394, in gold and silver, and we sent out 
only £112,519. As a contrast to this we sent to 
France £9,01 1,394, and brought home only £1,325,487. 
The balance of trade, so far as gold and silver could 
show it, was £8,779,875 in our favour with the 
American States, and £7,685,907 against us with 
France. How was this ? The United States took 
the produce of our industry to that extent expressed 
by the sum stated over and above what they sent 
us chiefly in useful produce for the masses of our 
people. But the money passed at once into the 
hands of those to whom France sends her silks and 
wines, and (over and above the value of a vast 
amount of goods of a substantial character) it was 
spent in luxury. Our large export to France might 
have brought over a vast supply to feed the hungry 



32 



Social Politics. 



and clothe the naked; but the power over it was in 
hands whose wishes and tastes gave it a different 
destination. We sent to France, in value, £12,862,668, 
chiefly useful articles, besides the balance in money 
we have stated, and we got back, almost exclusively 
in articles of luxury, £33,033,401. There was no 
doubt a great profit on the trade, so far as the traders 
were concerned ; but when the wine, brandy, silks, 
gloves, and similar things are taken into account, we 
see that there was next to nothing among the entire 
imports that could reach the hands of the industrial 
masses of our countrymen. The fruits of their 
labour brought all — but not for them. 

We do not make these statements as if France 
sent us no good thing, or as if the United States 
sent us no luxury, but in order to enable the reader 
to trace the money which comes to us from America 
and other countries, and goes from us to France, as 
clearly as anything can be traced, which is laboriously 
gained by one class, given away to another class, 
and spent in the luxurious desires of those to whom 
it is unconsciously conveyed. 

But France in this is only one striking instance of 
a vast system in which a large portion of our own 
people are devoted to minister to the luxury of those 
who are unnaturally rich, and who actually think 
it their duty to keep a large number so devoted. 
London represents what may well be regarded^as a 
nation within the nation of which it is the capital, 
and London is nearly entirely given up to the work 



Employment of Income. 



33 



of ministering to the luxury of the rich. A portion 
of those who unfairly derive their wealth from the 
masses of productive labourers in fruitful parts of this 
country, go and spend that wealth in France ; but an 
incalculably greater number go to spend it in the 
extravagances of the metropolis. Illustrations of 
this are easily got at on all hands. There, for ex- 
ample, is a small estate in one of our Scottish shires, 
purchased with the proceeds of a certain trade, or 
profession, by which its owner has become one of 
the " upper" class. The farmers and farm- workers 
on that estate produce what gives, perhaps, two 
pounds sterling an acre for the landlord. It is the 
hardest possible grinding for them ; but he lives 
luxuriously in London, and comes down only to 
amuse himself in killing the game preserved on 
the estate for his " sport." The entire produce of 
that estate, over and above the barest subsistence of 
the poor people that cultivate it, goes for luxury 
in that centre of fashion for the United Kingdom. 
This system makes London one vast sacrifice to the 
amusement and waste of human life. And that 
which London is on so vast a scale, other places are 
on a smaller scale, because of the concentration of 
wealth in the hands of a few, instead of its diffusion 
among the people as a whole. 

If the means of this concentration were fair, we 
should still deplore the fact, and seek ways and 
means for its mitigation ; but when the means are 
unfair in the very last degree — when the effects are 

D 



34 



Social Politics. 



terrible, and increasing in intensity every year, it is 
the duty of every one to think how so great an evil 
may be remedied by those unfair means being sup- 
pressed. The process now going on would soon ruin 
any nation. We believe such a process impossible 
without a departure from social law of the most 
vital character; but it is useless to speculate on 
the possible, when that which is actual is perfectly 
patent to all who will give it serious heed. The 
vast sum of income now devoted to ruinous luxury, 
is to a great extent gathered from the robbery of 
the masses. We shall yet see this truth placed 
beyond all doubt. 



35 



CHAPTER XII. 
DISTRIBUTION OF LAND. 

The number of persons who own the surface of a 
country, when compared with its entire population, 
is an important part of the index to its social con- 
dition. It is more important than the number who 
are wealthy apart from their ownership of land. 
For example, in 1861, the landholders of Ireland 
numbered only 8,412 persons in a population of 
5,798,967— that is, the small number of 8,412 held 
the power of removal from the surface of the country 
itself of above 5,000,000 of their fellow-creatures. 
That is, on an average, one person had this 
power over nearly 700 other persons. That is, one 
human being having the power, if he so chooses, to 
deny space on the earth's surface to about 700 of 
his fellow-men ! This does not put the matter so 
strongly as it would stand if we had the means of 
showing in how few hands by far the largest por- 
tion of the soil is held. 

We have another example in Scotland. The land- 
holders in this country, in 1861, numbered only 
1,877 men, and 1,098 women. This was a propor- 
tion of 2,975 in a population of 3,062,294. That 
gives only one landholder to every 1,030 of the 
population. But this is as nothing when we remem- 



36 



Social Politics. 



ber that about half of the whole kingdom is owned 
by not more than twelve persons. A very great 
many who hold the land, possess but a very small 
portion indeed ; and the lands of that class are gra- 
dually becoming absorbed by the wealthier, so that 
things are becoming every year worse and worse. 
We shall see this in the light of most serious facts 
when we come to consider the crowding of the 
people into incredibly small areas from this fatal 
monopoly in land. As much as £50 a year is now 
paid by labouring men for an acre of space on which 
to rear their dwellings ! 

England was a shade better off in this respect 
than Ireland and Scotland. She had, in 1861, 15,131 
men, and 15,635 women who held her land, in a 
population of 20,066,224 persons — that is, about one 
landholder to every 652 other persons. In the con- 
centration of land, however, we believe England is 
following in the wake of the two sister kingdoms. 
The men who held to so great an extent their own 
farms, are fast losing their hold through mortgages 

' CD © O © 

and necessitated sales, so that in counties where this 
class were the strength of society, they are becoming, 
as landholders, extinct. All that tends in this direc- 
tion is matter of most serious consideration for the 
true patriot. 

It is not indeed to be concluded that, merely 
because a man owns a large portion of the soil 
on which his fellow-creatures live, he will neces- 
sarily clear them off the land. But it is certain 



Distribution of Land. 



37 



that the pecuniary interest and scope for amuse- 
ment, or even retirement, of the landholder, are 
antagonistic to the occupation of his land by all 
but a small number of his fellow-creatures. And 
as the strong temptations of a luxurious life get 
hold of him, he will find himself constrained to con- 
sult that interest and luxury to the uttermost. Here, 
we shall say, are four small farms, occupied by four 
families, in all thirty souls, besides the servants 
needed to work the farms. One man will manage 
these four farms better than these four farmers who 
hold them now. His family is made up of two 
persons. We have a case in view. He will pay a 
higher rent than the four men can pay. His occu- 
pancy will favour the growth of game. The thirty 
are cleared off in favour of the two ! The landlord 
"has a right to do what he will with his own;" 
and so perhaps he has, if it is his own by fair play ; 
but, right or not right, it is a serious thing for the 
persons he shoves aside, that his own money interest 
and pleasure may be promoted. It is death itself 
to a very large proportion of them. This is demon- 
strated by the low death-rate of the country from 
which they are driven, as compared with the high 
death-rate of the crowded city to which such families 
are generally compelled to betake themselves. 

Now that the power of law-making has come into 
the hands of the masses, it will not cease to be mat- 
ter of increasing consideration that the land is held 
in so few hands. It is not necessary, nor is it likely, 



38 



Social Politics. 



that it will suggest " confiscation ;" but it will 
suggest that the land shall be held for the public 
good, or not held at all. Laws regulating the uses 
to which the land of the nation shall be devoted are 
inevitable, and will ere long be passed and executed 
too. Men who can make and unmake the legisla- 
ture will not die in favour of deer, merely because 
it so happens that a selfish hand has the landholder's 
hold of the soil by technical right. The people of 
this country need not, and we think they will not, 
resort to any other means by which to redistribute 
the surface so that all shall have space enough on 
which to live, than such as will inevitably follow 
the suppression of unfair modes of dealing between 
class and class in the community. 



39 



CHAPTER XIII. 
THE POSITION OF FARMERS. 

We have seen that, on an average, one person in Ire- 
land has the power to clear 700 other persons from 
the land — one person in Scotland has the same power 
over 1,030 — and one person in England has that 
power over 652. That was the state of the case (very 
nearly) in 1861 . How had that power been exercised, 
so far as we have records of a recent date ? 

First of all, in " the green isle." From 1841 to 
1861 the small holdings in Ireland decreased from 
562,235 to 269,400. That is, something near to 
292,835 persons were dispossessed by their landlords 
in favour of those who chose to rent larger portions 
of the soil. It would be wrong to think that all 
these cases were instances of hardship, or that all 
this vast number were cleared off, inasmuch as, if 
one man took four or five small holdings, and ceased 
to be himself a small holder by becoming a larger, it 
was no hardship to him, nor was he cleared off; but 
such a change involved, as we know, a vast sum of 
distress, and the constant presence of something like 
30,000 troops to carry it out. If no great system of 
wrong to the mass of the people of Ireland could be 
pointed out, and the ownership of the land as it 
now stands could be thoroughly justified, we might 



40 



Social Politics. 



set down the distress against the people who were 
cleared off themselves. Between 1841 and 1851 the 
deaths in Ireland from starvation alone amounted to 
21,770. We might call this the result of a famine, 
coming in the course of Providence; but it would be 
wicked to do so in full view of a system, by means 
of which one-fourth of the people in Scotland itself 
are now kept on the borders of absolute destitution. 
We shall come to the details of that system by and 
by. We have to do at present with the actual 
banishment from the tillage of the soil of a large 
and most important portion of those who had, 
hitherto, brought their bread and that of their chil- 
dren from it. 

In the case of Scotland we have no such records 
accessible as we have for Ireland; but when we com- 
pare the census of 1851 with that of 1861, there is a 
decrease in the agricultural part of the population 
to the extent of 9,594, and that in spite of an in- 
crease of 173,552 in the sum of the people. This is 
small when compared with the vast clearances of 
Ireland, yet it is a serious consideration when 9,594 
souls are swept from the land in ten years by the 
depopulating system followed now on the part of 
many lords of the soil. These owners of the surface 
are clearly both able and willing to say to the tide 
of human life in this kingdom that, so far as their 
estates are concerned, it shall roll backward; and 
this is not a thing to be passed over without earnest 
consideration by every lover of his kind. 



Tlie Position of Farmers. 



41 



England, being the wealthiest of the three king- 
doms — being, in fact, that into which the resources 
of the rest are carried away, to a great extent — 
shows a depopulating result most slowly. Yet the 
agricultural population of England decreased from 
1851 to 1861 by the number of 73,699, and that 
notwithstanding an increase of 2,138,615. It is a 
curious thing to think of the process by which the 
great landlords are gradually clearing off the human 
element from their estates, and crowding the masses 
closer and closer in the fatal atmosphere of the great 
towns. It is not in the nature of the case to avoid 
misery and expatriation if such a process goes on. 
It is an almost infinite mockery of a people who are 
being thus cleared off from the face of God's earth, 
to talk to them of " education," or of any other 
benefit, while bare foothold on the soil is denied 
them. The facts of human sacrifice which spring 
out of this system are truly dreadful : but we must 
not anticipate. 



42 



CHAPTER XIV. 

POPULATION OF THE SEABOAED. 

We have stated the area that may be strictly 
included in the United Kingdom as consisting of 
175,000 square miles. In this we have embraced 
" British waters/' as well as land and lakes. Stated 
in acres, that would be 112,000,000. If we take 
land with lakes and rivers only, we have 120,879 
square miles, or 77,362,560 acres. This is exclusive 
of the Channel Islands ; including these, the acreage 
is 77,513,585 ; we allow the difference to go into the 
seaboard. It will make ample house and garden 
ground for our seafaring people. This, then, leaves 
us 54,121 square miles, or 34,637,440 acres on which, 
by means of fisheries, to gather the food of a fair 
proportion of the population. It is to be kept in 
mind that, in such an estimate as we are now con- 
templating, we must fairly include the fishing- 
grounds that are within easy reach of our shores, 
though not strictly British waters. For example, a 
map of British fisheries, like that prefixed to the 
Royal Commissioners' Report of 1866, includes the 
Doggar Bank, lying off the coast opposite Hull. 
French and other fishermen have as good a right to 
fish over this ground as British, yet it is accessible 
easily to our fishermen, and vastly productive. So 



Population of the Seaboard. 



43 



are similar grounds at other parts off our coasts. 
But we give our own waters only as included in our 
estimate of surface available for life to a British 
people, that we may keep within the mark, and run 
no risk of going beyond it. 

If, then, we assign the fair proportion of our pre- 
sent population to this amount of seaboard, how 
will they stand ? We have, in round numbers, 
30,000,000 on 175,000 square miles— that is, fully 
172 persons to the square mile. It is thirty millions 
to one hundred and twelve millions of acres— that 
is, above three acres and two-thirds for every human 
being in these lands. The dry land, as we have 
said, with inland lakes and rivers, amounts to 
120,879 square miles, leaving 54,121 as the full 
extent of the seaboard, or British waters. Say, now, 
that we give 172 persons to the square mile of sea- 
board, that is only 9,308,812 persons as the fair 
proportion for our seafarers. We mean by this, that 
if the acreage of " British waters " and the seashore 
are no more crowded than British land as a whole, 
there will be 9,308,812 persons dependent on the 
produce of these waters. 

Well, let us take one or two facts that bear upon 
this view of our people. " The total weight of fish 
landed at Hull, in 1854, was 1,571 tons. In 1864, it 
had increased to 10,782 tons." At Grimsby, by simi- 
lar increase, in 1864, it was 11,108 tons. At Yar- 
mouth, in 1864 also, it was 34,432 tons. At Lowes- 
toft it was 17,340 tons. There was a fishing 



44 



Social Politics. 



amounting to 73,752 tons of wholesome food brought 
into four ports of England in one year. 

How many men of twenty years of age and up- 
wards were employed in this fishing ? To answer 
this question we take the whole number entered as 
"fishermen," in 1861, residing in the whole of the 
East Riding of Yorkshire, Lincoln, and Norfolk — 
that is, on the whole coast of which the four ports 
mentioned are representatives. The number was 
only 2,147. If we multiply that by five, thus 
giving five to a family, it amounts to only 10,735 
souls. The amount of fish landed at these four 
ports alone would give nearly seven tons a year to 
every person in the population engaged in the fish- 
eries and dependent on them. When we consider, 
in this connection, the rapid increase in the produce 
of these fisheries evident from the fact already 
stated, and the almost unlimited capability of yield 
in the ocean, it seems immeasurably absurd to think 
of an overcrowded population on our shores. If 
10,735 people are equal to bringing 73,252 tons of 
fish from the sea in one year, what would 9,308,812 
people do? They would land above 50,000,000 tons. 
Nor do we in this take a peculiarly favourable 
instance in illustration of our point. 

The statistics of the Scotch herring fisheries are 
of an equally striking character. In the five years 
ending with 1864, 3,372,000 barrels of herrings were 
cured in these fisheries. They were worth from 26s. 
to 40s. a barrel — say 30s. on the average. This vast 



Population of the Seaboard. 



45 



sum was in addition to an untold number of this 
fish that were sold uncured, yet it represents an 
earning of £5,058,000 in this fishery alone. This 
would give above £55 to every man, woman, boy, 
and girl employed in the work. Keep in mind that 
this was but a part of the actual gain. Any one 
who has lived near even a small fishing station, and 
seen the fishermen coming in from the sea in the 
morning, while a host of carts were waiting for their 
freight, ready to run off laden to neighbouring towns 
to sell the uncured fish; and still more, one who has 
seen, at such a port as that of Scarborough, from 
700 to 800 tons sent by railway into the country in 
a single day, cannot but know that the food, and all 
required for many times the population we have 
assigned to the seaboard as its proportion, is already 
brought from it to the land. If nine millions were 
placed on the seashore, instead of the small number 
now upon our fishing-stations, the seaboard would 
not be half occupied ; yet that number would take 
its full proportion as we now stand. How vastly 
must men be misled who talk of too many people 
being in this country ! 

Two things alone limit the possible numbers of 
our fishing population — the one is the denial of space 
on shore on which to live, the other is the swindling 
from them of their earnings. On many hundreds of 
miles of the coast no fisherman is allowed to place 
his cabin, or to lay up his boat. Wherever a few 
fishing families are allowed to live, as a rule, a place 



46 



Social Politics. 



for the sale of liquor and tobacco is licensed; and 
their scanty store is kept at its scanty rate by their 
paying eight eenpence, or even two shillings, for a 
pennyworth of liquor, and a shilling for the same 
value in tobacco. Poor boats, poor nets, poor every- 
thing belonging to the fisherman, is the result. But 
it is fearfully wicked, in the face of the facts of the 
case, to speak of overcrowding, and to ship off our 
people as if the land were full. We can give but a 
glance at the vast resources of the waters that thus 
teem with life and food for men ; but even that glance 
will, we trust, rouse many to earnest thought on 
the true and terrible state of the case of our 
.country. 



47 



CHAPTER XV. 
POPULATION OX FRESH WATERS. 

Next to those who live by the produce of the sea, 
comes that portion of a population who live by the 
water-power of our lakes and rivers. We have seen, 
so far, how abundantly the square miles of salt 
water may be utilized for subsistence to a popula- 
tion many times the number of that portion requir- 
ing to be assigned to it in our present state of 
things. In the same light, it is easy to see how the 
deduction made for lakes and rivers from the total 
acreage, is fairly included among the resources 
found on the surface of our country. Lakes are the 
natural reservoirs of water-power, rivers are the 
natural mill-races along which that power is con- 
veyed for the use of man. This is apart from that 
use of them to which we have already alluded, in 
which they supply our large cities with, water. It 
is apart, also, from their use as highways for in- 
ternal communication of great importance. Water- 
power is a great positive force, by the mere accept- 
ance of which many thousands of our people are 
already producing goods of value to a very high 
measure. 

If we take as instances the cotton-mills on the 
Clyde, and on the other rivers of the west of Scot- 



48 



Social Politics. 



land, with the other manufactories in various other 
districts producing other descriptions of goods, we 
have illustrations of this truth as to water-power. 
If we include the water-power of England and 
Wales, and even of Ireland, we find that, the part of 
the population already depending on this source of 
life is very considerable; and if we but glance at the 
vast extent to which that power is available beyond 
that degree in which it is used now, we shall see no 
reason to make deductions from our total area on 
account of lakes and rivers. The citizens of Edin- 
burgh, for example, lately took up the idea of hav- 
ing their supply of water from St. Mary's Loch, in 
Peeblesshire. Instantly the millowners along the 
course of the rivers depending for water-power on 
the supply in the loch, made it apparent that no 
small sum would suffice as " compensation " for even 
the partial diversion of water from their wheels. 
The same thing was made evident, to the no small 
cost of the citizens of Glasgow, when they applied 
for a very few feet of the surface of Loch Katrine. 
Such is the value of that water which is now flowing 
from our great lake reservoirs. The water-power 
used in textile factories, in 1868, amounted to that of 
29,830 horses ; yet this does not nearly include the 
water-power actually used in the United Kingdom, 
which is made to work in so many ways besides 
that of spinning and weaving. And it is capable of 
being used to tenfold the degree to which it is used 
now. Wheels sufficiently large and numerous to 



Population on Fresh Waters. 49 

receive the fall of our rivers, so that all our water- 
power should be employed in actual production, 
would, without doubt, far more than increase ten- 
fold the rate at which that power is made use of at 
our present stage. The number of acres deducted on 
account of lakes and rivers is, in Scotland alone, 
152,967. The number in England and Ireland is 
not estimated with any degree of exactness, so far 
as we find; but it cannot, in either, be above the sum 
of Scotland. It must be greatly under that sum; 
but it will be going on the safe side to regard 
it as the same. If we put the three kingdoms 
on an equal footing in this respect, the result 
would be about 716 square miles as the fresh water 
area. That would call for a population of only 
68,752. This would include boatmen and all 
dependent for a living on our fresh water system. 
There is now, as we have seen, a water-power 
actually used to the extent of 29,830 horses, which 
would be at the disposal of about a third of the 
above number of people as their working popula- 
tion. Allowing for children and others, not workers, 
there would be nearly the power of three horses 
for every two persons capable of attending to it. 
There lies too, beyond the limit of present use, 
as we have seen, a vast sum of power available 
for a great deal more than ten times the above 
numbers. This could readily and easily be em- 
ployed in the sustenance of a large and prosperous 
population. From the single family now occupying 

E 



50 



Social Politics. 



a small meal mill, and paying a high rent for their 
water-power alone, to the large millowner, or 
company of millowners, who are making fortunes 
from the use of that same power, we have abundant 
illustrations of this deeply interesting part of our 
great subject. Putting the fisheries on the sea- 
board and the water-power of our fresh water 
lakes and rivers together, we have far more than 
enough for the comfortable supply of their pro- 
portion of our present people. That is, altogether, 
9,377,564, of all ages. We shall by and by see 
how this estimate tells on the actual state of things, 
and the question will be terribly answered why so 
many of our people are perishing for want, and 
so many thousands being shipped off to distant 
shores. 



51 



CHAPTER XVI. 
UNPRODUCTIVE SURFACE. 

It would require a very great deal of calculation to 
tell exactly how much of the surface of this country 
is actually unproductive, and to assign its proportion 
of population to specially productive portions, — the 
ground, for example, on which a house or a factory 
is built, that on which an ironwork is erected, that 
which is covered by mountains of debris from mines, 
or otherwise used for productive purposes, could not 
be included in an estimate of waste land. The 
ground occupied by the railways and highways of 
the kingdom is not unproductive. Putting our 
whole agricultural and pastoral area together, we 
have a little over 70,881 square miles. If we add 
only 4,500 to this sum as representative of all 
occupied in the ways we have just indicated, we 
must deduct 75,381 from 120,163, in order to 
find in the difference, which is 44,782 square miles, 
something like the extent of our "mountain and 
heath " which are now unproductive. For this we 
should have a population of 7,701,504. To him 
who scarcely can be said to think at all, or to him 
who thinks only on the mere fancies of things as 
they present themselves to his own prejudiced mind, 
it would probably seem absurd in the extreme to 



52 



Social Politics. 



speak of finding sustenance and homes, for above 
seven millions of a population, on our heaths and 
mountains. But it will seem very different indeed 
to him who has looked about him thoughtfully 
during even a brief sojourn in the Highlands, where 
such land abounds. It has to be kept in mind that 
at the rate of population on which we are proceed- 
ing, every family of five persons would have 18 
acres of surface. In illustration of what we mean, 
take Sutherland, which had at last census only 13- 
persons on the square mile : allow these to have as 
their own what they occupy now, with power to 
subdue the whole of the square mile on which they 
live, and ere long they would not find it hard to 
sustain even 172. What is it which prevents the 
industrious aud frugal mountaineer from really 
thriving — subduing the heath and covering the 
mountain with good flocks ? It is all summed up 
in one word, and that word is " rent." This means 
that the produce which would suffice for all his. 
wants, and those of all properly depending upon 
him, must, in the great sum of it, go to another class 
of men. We shall abundantly explain how this 
difficulty is brought to stand in the way of the 
increase of our Highland populations, and how it 
is wasting them rapidly away: but this is not yet 
the place for such an explanation. We must first 
make the facts as to the capabilities of the land 
clear, and then give the explanation of the present 
state of things. But no one who knows anything 



Unproductive Surface. 



53 



on the subject can doubt that if our Highland 
peasantry owned the heaths and mountains on 
which they live, they would soon be tenfold the 
number they are now. 

There are two representatives of property on our 
heaths and highest mountains, — the one is the 
"factor" the other is the "gamekeeper" These re- 
present " rent! 3 The factor takes care to gather the 
last farthing that can be raised, through the sports- 
man and the farmer, for the heath and the moun- 
tain; and he raises all the more that the gamekeeper 
does his best to have the game as numerous as 
possible. Between these two representatives of 
ownership the farmer becomes so hard pressed that, 
were it not for a strong clinoino* to the land of his 
fathers' sepulchres, he would not long be found on 
this side of the Atlantic. This is not from any evil 
in the principle of property, and could not be cured 
by confiscation, nor yet by communism. The evil is 
in the principle by which property is taken from 
the right hands of the many and concentrated in 
those of the very few. We have no idea of arguing 
that seven millions of souls might live in comfort 
where now we have only heath and mountain all 
but void of population, under the present system ; 
but that system is just the very evil which we see 
the great legislator of the Hebrews anticipating and 
preventing when he foresaw that men would add 
field to field till they dwelt all but alone in the 
earth, and appointed the restorations of the jubilee. 



54 



Social Politics. 



It is on the principle that the men who till the land 
shall own it also, that we can alone see what a 
country is capable of sustaining : and it is no un- 
heard-of theory that they should so own it. Our 
present great " land question/' as it affects Ireland, 
is proceeding on the idea that tillage of land gives 
at least a full right to that difference in value which 
lies between its untilled and tilled condition to him 
who tills it. He does not see far who does not 
anticipate the day when it will be well executed 
British law that no snare shall be laid, such as 
entraps the proprietor of a few acres into handing 
over his right to his richer superior; and, moreover, 
that all land shall be held for the public good, and 
so shall not be held by him who devotes it to his 
own private whims ; and when that shall be, there 
will be scope enough on our moors and mountains 
for far more than seven millions of a thriving popu- 
lation. Let any one examine a community of those 
who in some parts of Scotland are called "moss 
lairds" — that is, men to whom a certain portion of 
utterly useless land (lying under a depth of peat, 
growing heath only) is given for a series of years 
without rent, on condition that they clear and ren- 
der it fit for cropping. We do not know a more 
interesting set of families than these always are. A 
lazy man cannot be among them, nor a drunken 
man — all must be industrious ; and the more chil- 
dren they have the better, these are very soon 
indeed worth their keep to their fathers. Had these 



Unproductive Surface. 



55 



people the power to buy and keep their little cleared 
patches, while generation after generation went on 
clearing for themselves, and owning also, we should 
very soon have far more than seven millions occupy- 
ing what is now only " heath and mountain land." 
But there is a system by means of which they are 
effectually prevented from being able to do this. If 
one generation is allowed to go to the grave without 
being subjected to the temptations of the drink 
curse, the following is not allowed to do so. One 
successful brewer is able to buy out a thousand of 
them for the sake of a few weeks' sport in autumn. 
So is any one into whose hands the taxation of 
liquordom is directed and remains. The beggared 
remnants of our peasantry are consequently driven 
off everywhere towards, or into, the huge masses 
now concentrated in the fatal atmosphere of the 
great towns, and our heaths and mountain-land are 
given up to something nearly as bad as desolation. 



56 



CHAPTER XVII. 

A GRAZING POPULATION. 

We have now disposed of by far the most difficult 
portions of our country's surface, and shown, we 
think, their full capability to sustain their share 
of the people who inhabit the United Kingdom. 
The next part of the land to which we must direct 
attention is " permanent pasture, meadow, or grass 
not broken up in rotation." Though not exclusively 
pasture land, — inasmuch as parts of it belong to 
farms of an arable character, and are used for hay, — 
on the whole, the sum of it represents our grazing 
space and resources. Here we have to do with about 
34,632 square miles, or 22,164,584 acres of grass 
land, and the proportion of the population is 
5,956,704. As this land is now used, there could 
be no difficulty in the sustenance of a much larger 
number if the flocks were their own and fed on 
their own pasture. 

Chiefly on this land there grazed, in 1868, no less 
than 35,607,812 sheep, besides no small proportion 
of 9,183,416 cattle. It is interesting to look over 
the tables and see how the proportions lay. For 
example, on every 100 acres of Aberdeenshire there 
were 28 cattle and 29 sheep, while on the same 
breadth in Argyle there were 45 cattle and 786 



A Grazing Population. 



57 



sheep; in Selkirk, 11 cattle and 818 sheep, omitting 
the fractions. This tells us what is meant by per- 
manent pasture or grass land. These flocks and 
herds are cultivated now on a system which implies 
the smallest possible number of people on the land 
where they are fed. It is not food and clothing for 
those who actually cultivate the flocks but rent that 
is the great thing aimed at, and hence the system is 
pursued that will bring the greatest amount of this. 
There are few, if any, more noble men than our 
shepherds as a class; but what would they be in 
position and number if they owned the flocks they 
feed and the land on which they feed them ? To 
what extent could they retain their sons and daugh- 
ters in their homes, instead of sending them off to 
do domestic work to other men, if this were the 
case ? We must not allow selfish and foolish preju- 
dice to turn away our thoughts from such questions 
if we would really study the capabilities of our 
native land. 

But this introduces another and most important 
element into this part of our subject. A vast 
amount of the land now permanently under grass is 
capable of cultivation such as would far more than 
treble its grazing power, and a great deal of it is 
capable of good corn culture. This is true of a vast 
portion of it now given up to deer. Hundreds of 
thousands of sheep are cleared off for the sake of 
" sport," and that not from the worst of land. But 
apart from this sad fact, the surface now keeping 



58 Social Politics. 



sheep only could be well and profitably cultivated 
for grain. Where there is an enterprising family, hav- 
ing good advantages — such as low rent, or similar 
encouragement — you can see the truth of this in the 
beautiful green of certain fields, and in the yellow 
grain in harvest time, where all was, not long ago, a 
gray pasture, or even brown heath. Where the 
liquor curse has been kept at a distance, this is the 
state of things, even under great disadvantages other- 
wise; showing us what would be the case if our 
pastoral population were so raised as to be owners 
of the acres on which they now feed the cattle and 
sheep of other men. 

No doubt the bare suggestion of such a state of 
things will seem like sedition to those who worship 
great wealth, whether as its owners, or as those who 
adore it even in others' hands. But if it is deter- 
mined that millions shall be denied even a footing 
on God's earth in order that a few persons should 
wallow in riches, it should be understood on all 
hands that this is the cause of the poverty and the 
exile of those millions, and not that they are starved 
and banished because the Father of all has failed to 
make room for them. If, for example, twelve men 
shall own the half of all Scotland, as the favoured 
beings to whom that Great Father has given it, in 
order that they may drive off from its surface all 
but the few suited to serve their luxurious purposes; 
and if it is in Providence that masses should be 
heaped tier above tier as they now lie in our great 



A Grazing Population. 



59 



cities, dying in scores every week for want of food 
and air, it should be very plainly preached that this 
is the normal state of things. If the cattle on a 
thousand hills are either not Gods, or being His He 
wills that they should be used for only a small 
favoured portion of the human family, the less 
favoured should understand this. They should not 
have the straitness of the land for them put forward 
as a reason for that which is to be accounted for 
altogether otherwise. 

But we cannot help digressing so far as to say 
that there are symptoms, and very strong symp- 
toms too, which tend to show that a spirit is 
awakening which will not long allow the truth and 
justice of this vast subject to lie hid. In the very last 
election of members to represent us in Parliament, 
the greatest of our landholders saw their sons set 
aside by the populations of the lands they own. 
The farming class are awaking out of the sleep of 
centuries, and the class below that are not destined 
to lie long in slumber. Emigration, though it will 
save a few thousand families from the horrors of our 
social state, is absolutely powerless to right that 
state as it now proceeds from year to year. Nay, 
emigration is calculated to put that state further 
away, as we shall yet show. The cry will go up 
into ears that will not be allowed the privilege of 
deafness; and those who now bid defiance to the tide 
of life, and compel it to roll backward, will see it 
their wisdom to yield and allow the pastures of our 



60 



Social Politics. 



country to be again trod by the feet of noble men, 
who shall own both their lands and the flocks that 
are fed upon them. This will not be by " confisca- 
tion/' nor yet by charity; but by the culture of a 
virtuous and frugal character, where now the plun- 
der of the drink-shop is gathered amid the sins and 
sorrows of a degraded people. The first right step 
in legislation has been already taken in this direc- 
tion in the case of Ireland. There the farmers are 
now not only to be protected in their interests, so 
far as improvement of the land is concerned, but 
helped by loans from the public purse in purchasing 
the lands which they improve. The idea at the 
root of Mr. Gladstone's great land bill for the Green 
Isle is, that of the men who farm acres owning 
them also. Another mighty step is required, and it 
too will be taken ere long. 



61 



CHAPTER XVIII. 
OUR AGRICULTURAL POPULATIOX. 

The part of our country to which we naturally come 
after that which is strictly pastoral, is that usually 
described in authoritative statistics as "under all 
kinds of crops, bare fallow, and grass." The grasses 
meant in this heading are, " clover, and artificial and 
other grasses under rotation." The land so described 
is strictly that which is coming regularly under the 
plough. It is such as for its present culture demands 
a considerable population, just as that kept under 
permanent pasture or meadow land requires com- 
paratively few. Its extent is a little over 36,249 
square miles, or 23,199,476 acres. The population 
belonging to it, if no more were given than to the 
rest of the space we include in the United Kingdom, 
would be only 6,134,828. 

There are several ways in which we may estimate 
the capability of the land in relation to such a 
people. The rent alone will average £2 an acre. 
Some of our richest land, where it is well situated, 
pays as high as £5, and no arable land really 
under crops pays less than £1. A rent of £2 an 
acre would be under, rather than over, the mark. 
This, then, is the yield of the land after all expense 
of tillage is defrayed, together with the profits of the 



62 



Social Politics. 



farmer. These, alas ! are low, from the state of 
things prevailing; still they are something, and not 
to be altogether despised. If, then, we calculate the 
rent of the acres before us at £2, that is a yearly 
sum of £46,372,752. That is, about £7, 10s. for 
every soul in the population assigned to this land. 
It is £37, 10s. for every family of five, and that in 
rent alone. If you add to this the value of the 
labour of which such a population are capable, and 
by which the yield of the land could easily be vastly 
increased, it will appear cogently that our arable 
land is sufficient not only for the sustenance of such 
a people, but for that number in addition to all that 
occupy it now. How is it, then, that men cry out 
for the shipment of 100,000 souls annually, as 
essential to the deliverance of the country ? We 
shall by and by show how it is. The explanation 
is only too close at hand. 

There is another way, besides that of rent, in 
which this capability of the land is seen. There is 
nothing more striking than the stream of produce 
now flowing from all our agricultural and pastoral 
districts up to London. Less striking, but not less 
instructive, are the small streams that flow in the 
direction of other great cities. The distance over 
which this produce is sent is astonishing. The 
consequent enhancement of its money value is very 
great. The profits of merchants, and the cost of 
conveyance, is something enormous. All this is so 
much less to the general population. Consumed on 



Our Agricultural Population. 63 



or near the land on which it is produced, all this 
cost of exchange on this produce would be saved. 
Why is it that a country cries out reasonably, and 
fiercely, against "absenteeism 1 ' on the part of its 
proprietors ? It is not merely because these do not 
spend their rents at home, but because these rents, 
in produce, must go to where they live, to feed them 
and those they employ in the most costly way, 
instead of remaining to feed, comparatively inex- 
pensively, the people who produce it. The cost of 
exchange and conveyance, as this country now stands 
in this very matter, enriches thousands and would 
sustain millions. Men must ere long open their 
eyes to this— emigration will not serve to hide it. 

From the pastoral being mixed up with the 
strictly agricultural population in all our returns, it 
is not easy to say how many at present really live 
by agriculture. The sum is greatest, no doubt, in 
England ; but the proportion is far the greatest in 
Ireland, where a large portion of the whole people 
are still on the land. The number is remarkably 
small in Scotland. But, whether we take one 
country or another, it is beyond doubt that the soil 
is capable of sustaining a great increase beyond its 
present occupants, — and that, too, altogether apart 
from the important matter of manufacture for other 
countries. The land is not able to support other lands 
as it is now doing. Millions of acres in France are 
given up to raise wine for the rich in this country. 
British labour must make up for this, and keep the 



64 



Social Politics. 



French whose labour and land are so employed. So 
with vast tracts of country elsewhere than in France. 
Directly or indirectly, the produce of our fields is 
sent off to compensate the countries from which the 
costly extravagances of wealth are drawn for the 
few. We are not able for this and the sustenance of 
a population such as the country can well enough 
sustain of itself. Neither are we able to sustain the 
fearful waste of good food in the manufacture of 
liquor, now consuming what we shall soon see is an 
incredible sum. These things must be laid to heart, 
for (as we have said more than once) emigration 
cannot help us out of the difficulty which these 
bring, and must keep upon us, so long as the present 
system goes on. The cause must be arrested, or the 
effect will continue to grow upon us. As we shall 
more fully show, when we come properly to the 
point, the men who emigrate are the very hands by 
whose industry we have been kept so long from the 
state of collapse which has at length come. The 
men and women they leave behind are the compara- 
tively helpless, whose energy is not even sufficient 
to stave off pauperism from themselves, and who 
cannot possibly wage a successful war with a system 
which drains off every possible penny, and thing, to 
be devoured in luxury. Another system than that 
which now prevails must come, and it will come; 
it is, in fact, coming fast. 



65 



CHAPTER XIX. 
WHERE ARE THE PEOPLE ? 

We have now gone over the whole of our surface, 
with the exception of 4,500 square miles allowed 
for dwelling and working space, not otherwise 
productive. We have, so to speak, allocated and 
provided for all but 829,400 of the people taken at 
thirty millions. This number is made up of 
774,000 belonging to the ground space with which 
Ave have now to do, and of 55,400 belonging 
to fractional parts of other land, omitted in our 
rough calculations. If the population were fairly 
distributed as land and water allow, at no greater 
density than 172 persons to the square mile, 
there would be left only 774,000 for all our 
cities, towns, and villages, of every size and char- 
acter. He who takes a careful view of the country 
with its capabilities, will see that but for a fatal 
system of distribution on the surface, there could 
be no such thing possible as an overcrowded com- 
munity on that surface. He will, in his mind's 
eye, see a people fully capable, not only of 
providing for themselves, from sea and land, but 
for twice their number; and so situated that all 
have full space on which to dwell, and in wdiich 
to breathe the breath of life. He will be naturally 

F 



66 



Social Politics. 



interested in the question as to where this people 
are now. And when he sees where they are, he 
will be still more interested in the question as to 
why they are so frightfully concentrated in our 
cities and large towns. 

As we have traced the capabilities of the country 
from the circumference towards the centres, we 
may look here first to the fishermen. These we 
find in crowds and poverty as a great general rule. 
Instead of having vessels capable of living in a 
storm, and harbours adequate to such vessels, with 
all needed space for comfortable and healthful 
dwellings, they go to sea in boats utterly inade- 
quate for their working and safety, and come home 
to houses of the poorest character. Is this because 
they do not win a sufficient amount of money to 
enable them to accumulate capital for their 
purpose ? No. It is because the money they win 
goes from them in the most heartrending of all 
ways, at the rate of two shillings often for a penny- 
worth of liquor, such as unfits them both for their 
hazardous work, and also for their knowing their 
own true interests. The fishermen who bring their 
fish into the port of London, actually sell that for 
3d. to 4d. "which is charged Is., Is. 3d., and Is. 6d. 
a pound'' by the retailer * This is in keeping with 
the fishermen purchasing from the licensed liquor 
sellers for a shilling, one-and-sixpence, and even 
two shillings, that which is worth, at the brewery 
* Fisheries Report, 1866, page xvii. 



Where are the People ? 



67 



and distillery, only a penny ! Wherever this liquor 
traffic is absent, our fishermen are among the most 
prosperous of our people, and are able to sell their 
goods to full advantage. They are able, too, to have 
houses worthy of prosperity. 

But we soon find more sad food for reflection. 
How about that part of the people who live by 
water-power ? Go to such a place as New Lanark, 
where Robert Owen built what he, poor man, 
thought a model village. There you see a poor 
crowd of souls condemned to stand on the mill 
floors from early morning till night, and then to 
sleep where, instead of 172 to a square mile, you 
have some thousands cooped up within a very few 
acres ! The very faces of the people tell you of a 
low vitality, the result of overwork and want of suf- 
ficient food and air. There are contrasts to this. At 
Catrine, in Ayrshire, for example, you have a people 
more liberally dealt with as to space, and hence a 
healthy people comparatively, yet a people kept 
down, on the whole, by the way in which they are 
dealt with in the infamous liquor trade; a people, 
too, who suffer terribly, because of the competition 
unnaturally forced upon them through the driving 
off from pastoral and arable land of those who, 
when driven off, sell work and life in our mills. 
Masses who ought to be tilling the fields of Ireland, 
or tending their own flocks in the Highlands, are 
condemned to imprisonment with hard labour for 
life to our cotton factories. Just before us (in this 



68 



Social Politics. 



mornings paper as we write) is the statement that 
in one instance "twenty small tenants, with their 
belongings, were cleared off for the sake of deer." 
What then ? Where are these twenty families to 
go ? To a manufacturing town. What then ? Is 
not that at least a hundred pairs of hands going to 
compete with those already far too many there, for 
leaye to toil and herd in the crowded houseroom ? 

What are we to say about our unproductive 
heaths and mountains? Where are the 7,701,504 
who ought by this time in the history of civilization 
to have been nearly finishing the subjugation of our 
waste acres ? They have not only not been per- 
mitted to encroach upon these, but have been, and 
are being driven away from the borders from which 
they might successfully assail them. Even if they 
could compete with English sportsmen in paying 
more rent than these gentlemen could afford, for 
the privilege of cultivating the ground, it is doubt- 
ful if they would be allowed in the present temper 
of those who claim the land; but they have no 
power of the kind. Whisky has cursed and beg- 
gared our Highlands. As much of it is drunk, 
and paid for at the rate of two shillings for a 
pennyworth, on the occasion of a single funeral, as 
would account for a whole family's savings for years. 
The mass of the people are consequently helpless, 
and are swept away, as in the above-mentioned 
case, by twenty families at a stroke, till the land 
that they had reclaimed is becoming waste again. 



Where are the People ? 



69 



The truth of this is seen when we come to 
the pastoral population. Where are they? It is 
chiefly from among them that the hands should 
be found to reclaim our larger wastes, so as to make 
them pastoral at least. In Scotland, especially, it is 
amazing to how great an extent the land is bare of 
inhabitants. We have already alluded to Suther- 
land, with its thirteen and three-tenths to the 
square mile. We have also Inverness, with only 
twenty and eight-tenths, Argyle with only twenty- 
four and a -half, Ross and Cromarty with only 
twenty-five and eight-tenths, and Peebles with only 
thirty-two. Place their proper proportion of 172 to 
the square mile on these counties (and they are 
abundantly fit to sustain them), what would be the 
result ? Instead of people crowding each other to 
death in our over-full towns and cities, and making 
good wages impossible, we should have room and to 
spare, and manufacturing labour would be worth 
three times what it will bring now. Our working 
men do not see what is wrong. They imagine that 
if they get wages forced up, all will be well ! If 
they can only drive off apprentices, and all other 
competitors, so as to keep the supply of labour 
down, they must prosper ! How little they calculate 
on the crowds that are gathering around all centres 
of work, who must be fed or die, and who will force 
themselves, one way or other, upon the labour- 
market, do what workmen may, so long as they 
are driven off the land. 



70 



Social Politics. 



The same truth stares us in the face when we 
come to the arable land and its population. As wo 
have already seen, a larger proportion of people is 
absolutely necessary here, if the land is to be pro- 
perly wrought; but it is not necessary that these 
should be other than mere labourers, who shall be 
utterly dependent on a few masters. So the small 
farmer gives way to the mere ploughman; and 
capitalists, few in number, command the soil. This 
gives rise to a very remarkable state of things. The 
Irish farmers, with their families, are driven off from 
their farms, and come over to Scotland in shoals to 
press their labour on our capitalist farmers. They 
are fast taking the place of a Scotch peasantry, while 
these are driven into the towns, or altogether off the 
country. Again, our Scotchmen are crowding in 
upon English labour and competing with that, both 
in the country and in the towns. The Irish are 
cheaper than the Scotch, and the Scotch are cheaper 
than the English; and, without knowing why, the 
working masses are being shoved off in thousands to 
save them from death, only because there is a horribly 
false system operating upon the more distant por- 
tions of the people. 

Hence, while the whole population left for all our 
cities, towns, and villages put together, if we allow 
its fair share to every class, would be under one 
million, London alone has far above two millions of 
inhabitants. Our people are to be found cooped up 
and laid one above another, in what are called the 



Where are the People ? 71 



"great centres," in a manner that is more than 
enough to rouse every earnest soul to its utmost 
pitch of enthusiasm in seeking out the real cause, 
and the true remedy, for such a dreadful state of 
things. 

But we must pursue this subject under the aspect 
of its consequences, and in another chapter. It is 
when seen in these consequences that the clearance 
of our square miles of land is beheld in its truly 
terrible character; and it is here also that the system 
by which the masses are rendered helpless has the 
evidence of its sad character. While many are 
shocked at the mere immorality of drunkenness, 
the far more fatal power of avarice, acting through 
means of the fascinating power of liquor, is devour- 
ing thousands of precious lives. 



72 



CHAPTER XX. 
CROWDING AND DEATH. 



Silly men, when we urge a subject like this upon 
them, are satisfied to grumble because we are " try- 
ing to set class against class/' or with some equally 
foolish expression of their dissatisfaction. They 
seem to imagine that it is the God-appointed state 
of things that now prevails ! But men and women 
of thought will follow out the subject, and not rest 
till they see its end. You must come, then, with 
us' into such a city as Edinburgh, or Glasgow. We 
may look into both. In these cities you find as 
many as from 400 to upwards of 600 sleeping, all 
at once, over one acre of space on the earth's surface. 
That is, at the rate of 246,000 or 384,000 to the 
square mile instead of 172. By an infamous sys- 
tem, which is only too easily explained, masses 
are unable even to rent enough of ground on 
which to place a bed. We have the most striking 
illustrations of the results of this in our large 
Scottish towns — notably we have these in its 
metropolis. The excellent Oificer of Health in 
Edinburgh, Dr. Littlejohn, has furnished admirable 
information on this, and, indeed, on all points bear- 
ing on the sanitary condition of the people. Let us 
look up one of these seven or eight storey " lands" 



Crowding and Death. 



as they are called, so common in Edinburgh, with 
from 150 to 200 persons living in each flat. Tier 
above tier, these poor people sleep one over the other, 
so that if it were not for the floors there would be 
literally no room for half the beds on that portion 
of surface on which the house stands. These people 
are actually denied space on the surface of the earth 
on which to sleep, and are compelled to pile them- 
selves thus one above the other in the air. Here is 
an instance to the point furnished by Dr. Littlejohm 
It is " No. 23 St. James' Street." There are six flats 
and 220 souls in that one house; no less than ten 
families, numbering 49 persons, occupy the first 
floor. They have only 13 rooms among the 49, 
and we may form some idea of how many must 
sleep in each very small room. The second flat 
has nine families, but 54 persons. So we rise, flat 
after flat, till we have the whole 220 human 
beings accommodated. The flat actually on the 
surface of the earth is devoted to shops — the house 
is really seven storeys high. The whole 220 persons 
in this one building are without a foot of the actual 
surface of the land on which to exist. In 1863 the 
deaths in this " land," as it is called, were six. That 
is, a death-rate of over 27 in the thousand, and this 
in spite of the utmost efforts to keep the mortality 
down. Dr. Littlejohn says that cases of infectious 
disease occurring in such houses are speedily carried 
off to the Infirmary ; and that were not this the case 
the mortality would be " greatly increased." As it is, 



74 



Social Politics, 



that mortality is vastly above what it is where men 
live on the ground, and have air to breathe. Dr. 
Littlejohn shows that in one district — that is, 
"Between the North Bridge and St. Mary's 
Wynd," — the people are heaped above one another, 
till as many as 646 live over a square acre of 
surface ! The mortality here is enormous, and is 
explained by the density of the population, — that 
is, by the simple fact that they are laid thus 
above one another. With all the efforts to keep 
it down it is above 39 in the thousand annually. 

One dreadfully affecting fact comes out here in 
connection with children under five years of age. 
The death rate annually among the young below 
this age is above 184 in the thousand; that is, out 
of every one thousand of such infants denied suffi- 
cient breath for want of space to live in, above 184 
die in the course of the year! It is in the tender 
bud that the vast majority are slain by this Moloch 
of iniquity. When we take the two extremes in 
Edinburgh, — the death rate of the Grange district, 
we have only thirteen in the thousand, while in 
the worst part of the city it is above sixty — it 
shows us that 47 persons out of every thousand 
are hurried prematurely into eternity every year, 
in these horrid throngs, by overcrowding alone ; but 
when we look at the proportion of children's deaths 
to the number of their class, the sacrifice is more 
dreadful still. 

Dr. Gairdner has issued a deeply interesting 



Crowding and Death. 



75 



report of the health of Glasgow during the trying 
months in the spring of 1869. From that we learn 
that, in five districts, with about 80,000 inhabitants 
favourably situated, the death rate rose 12 in the 
thousand above the usual low average; but in 
thirteen districts, with about the same population 
unfavourably placed, it rose no less than 26 above 
the usually high average. This shows us that in the 
special times when death strikes a city with unusual 
rigour, the poor crowded masses feel by far the 
keenest sweep of the scourge. All combines to cry 
aloud for space on the old earth's bosom on which 
her children may breathe. 

Now, let us not be misunderstood. This placing 
of human beings over one another, causing so high a 
death rate, is not the case with the poor and vicious 
alone. It is just as bad with the most respectable 
of the working classes, and even with many above 
them in social rank. An unnatural value has been 
given to the surface, so that it is utterly impossible 
for the majority of the people to pay for as much of it 
as is needful for bare life to themselves and their 
children, and so they must make up their minds to 
live above one another in this way, with the perfect 
assurance that a large proportion of them will die 
prematurely as the consequence. Dr. Littlejohn 
says — "The inhabitants most comfortably housed 
are to be found in India Place and Dean Street, 
but, notwithstanding these advantages, the closeness 
with which the people are packed leads to un- 



76 



Social Politics. 



healthiness, and raises the mortality. It has been 
plausibly urged that this high rate of mortality is 
caused by their proximity to the water of Leith; but 
this explanation is seen to be erroneous when the 
sanitary condition of the village of the Water of 
Leith is enquired into." There, as the Dr. shows, 
the sanitary conditions are vastly worse, with the 
exception that the poor people live on the ground, 
and do not sleep one tier above another in the air. 
It is just as certain as any truth can possibly be, 
that for limit of land a large proportion of the 
people of this country are thus killed off every year. 
They are denied this absolutely essential condition 
of bare life. No doubt they are denied other condi- 
tions, such as sufficient food and clothing, together 
with other advantages tending to health ; but in 
this one matter of mere surface alone, we have the 
explanation of the premature death of many many 
thousands annually. 



77 



CHAPTER XXI. 
LAND AND LIQUOE. 

If a man has a shilling and gives it for drink, he 
cannot have that shilling with which to do anything 
else. If a people give up an acre of land for the 
growth of grain to be consumed in making drink, 
they cannot have that land for any other purpose, 
any more than the man can have his shilling. There 
is nothing more certain than this. A man, for 
example, lives now in a £10 house, but he gives 
away so much for liquor this year, that he moves 
into one at £5. He goes on, and the third year he 
rents a cellar at £2, 10s. This is a case of which 
we know the details. It is illustrative of the way 
in which we are giving up the land year by year, 
till the masses are dying for utter lack of fresh air. 
Let us look a little at the details of this dreadful 
element in explanation of our overcrowding and 
mortality. 

The grain and sugar used in the manufacture of 
strong drink in the United Kingdom, in 1868, was 
equal to 60,000,000 bushels of barley. At 40 
bushels to the acre, that is equal to 1,500,000 acres 
of good land. That would give a quarter of an acre 
of land to every family of four in the entire popula- 
tion. On that land, capable of giving house and 



78 



Social Politics. 



garden room to the entire people, there was not 
allowed one bed to be laid, because of the use made 
of it for this vile end ! Not one particle of good 
(but a vast sum of evil) sprang out of this tremen- 
dous sacrifice of land. Nothing such as could com- 
pensate society in the slightest degree was allowed 
for it. Let any sane man, who is not cursed by 
avarice and interested in the prey, ask himself the 
question if any country can give up so much of its 
best surface to such a purpose, and still its people 
have room on that surface to breathe ? 

Then the ground is not only lost, but the food 
raised upon it is lost also. The whole land in Scot- 
land returned as under corn crops, in 1868, was only 
1,386,441 acres. The land given up in that year to 
the growth of grain for liquor was greatly above 
that under these crops in the whole of this northern 
kingdom. All the best land actually under com 
crops, with all their produce, represent so much land 
occupied and so much land lost — and worse than 
lost — to the masses of the United Kingdom. If 
there were nothing but this, would it not account 
for our overcrowding and death ? 

Then, for what purpose really is that land given 
up, and that food all wasted? We sometimes 
wonder if any one is so foolish as to imagine that it 
is so devoted from the highly benevolent wish that 
"the working man should not be deprived of his 
beer." We wonder if our Home Secretary is so 
absolutely childish as to fancy that it is " justice " 



Land and Liquor . 



79 



to the masses of the people to keep the power of 
suppressing the liquor traffic out of their hands. 
He said, in the House of Commons, on the 12th of 
May last, that it would be an "injustice" so to 
commit this traffic to the votes of two-thirds of the 
ratepayers. It is difficult — most difficult — to believe 
that a man with brain enough to be Home Secretary 
for the Empire, could be so utterly silly as to believe 
such a monstrous absurdity. That grain is used for 
the very same purpose as that for which opium is 
grown in India. The opium has an irresistible 
fascination in relation to the Chinese — so has alco- 
holic liquor in relation to the masses of this country. 
Men and women will part with all but life to get it, 
and if it could be enjoyed without life, they would 
give that too. The grain is used simply in the 
manufacture of a bait by means of which any 
amount of money can be drawn from a certain large 
class in the community. This can scarcely escape 
any mind that has given the very slightest attention 
to the subject. It is the grossest foolery that ever 
was talked when men speak of a certain number of 
shops for the sale of liquor being " necessary" in a 
district, unless it is meant "necessary in order to draw 
the money out of the pockets of the people;'' con- 
sequently the occupancy of the land, and the waste 
of grain, are all against the masses, not merely nega- 
tively but positively. When this infamous system 
has gone on increasing till the whole arable area of 
one of the three kingdoms is devoted to it, is it any 



80 



Social Politics. 



matter for wonder that even 646 persons are found 
huddled over an acre of surface ? The space on the 
earth is abundantly provided, but it is in other 
hands, and used against the masses. The grain grows 
plentifully upon the soil, but that too is used against 
them. They have wages, but these are taken from 
them by the legerdemain of liquordom, and, as poor 
emasculated creatures, they hide their miserable 
heads in the horrid dens where death so speedily 
thins their numbers ! Is there not manhood enough 
left us to put this foul iniquity down? Are even 
our " better classes " so lost to all that is truly noble 
that they will eat the fruit of such a murderous 
robbery, and hold their tongues? We do not be- 
lieve it. 



81 



CHAPTER XXII. 
DISASTROUS EXCHANGE. 

Because men will part with produce of all kinds 
for gold and silver, and again part with gold and 
silver for produce, what is called " money" forms a 
convenient medium of exchange. But because of 
this same character of money it becomes a tremen- 
dous power in the hands of those who manage to 
accumulate it largely. He who has a great command 
of money, among those who have little command of 
it, can easily make his own even the very necessaries 
of life produced by his neighbours. Such a man as 
the Duke of Portland will come down into the north 
of Scotland, and, simply because of the money at his 
command, will sweep off both landlord and tenant 
from many square miles where once lived a happy 
and noble people. But we need not dwell on this 
which all men know so well. 

It is more important to see how the money is now 
passing rapidly into a few hands, so that the lives of 
the population are sacrificed to the pleasures of a 
few rich men. The liquor and tobacco traffic are 
the grand means by which this passage is effected. 
All other means are as nothing to these. Some men 
of mark are awaking to this truth, but they approach 
it as if they were afraid to speak it out in full. For 

G 



82 



Social Politics. 



example, in the estimate usually formed of the cost of 
the liquor consumed in the United Kingdom, "spirits" 
— that is, "proof spirits" — are taken at twenty- 
shillings a gallon, although this liquor is actually 
sold to the poorest of the people at twenty-two 
shillings, after being diluted with more than a fourth 
of water ! So low an estimate is nearly as good as 
none, inasmuch as it tends to hide rather than to 
expose the true state of the case. Then the tobacco 
money is left out altogether, because so many tem- 
perance men "smoke," and "smokers" are easily 
offended ! This again hides the true state of the 
case. The wine, too, and other drinks consumed 
almost exclusively by the classes whom the system 
enriches, are included in an estimate, the chief object 
of which is, or ought to be, not to show how they 
keep themselves a little lower than they might other- 
wise be, but how they are placed so unhappily out of 
their true relations to the rest of their fellow-men. 
We think it of great moment to look at the question 
of money spent from this momentous point of view. 

The British spirits sold chiefly as whisky or gin 
are consumed by the mass of the people, and not 
to any appreciable extent by the wealthier classes. 
Three "proof" gallons of whisky will stand a gallon 
of water and be " strong " when compared with the 
liquor sold to the masses at sixpence a gill. But the 
glass gill (sold at sixpence) holds only enough to 
make 44 gills in the gallon. If the gill is not glass, 
but an imperial measure, the charge is at lowest 



Disastrous Exchange. 



83 



sevenpence. We must take the matter as it stands, 
and hence put twenty-two shillings as the money 
paid for a gallon of diluted spirit. To him who 
carefully inquires into the matter this will be found 
sufficiently under the mark to make our calculations 
more than " safe." 

There were 21,008,634 gallons of proof spirit con- 
sumed in the United Kingdom in 1868.* We must 
add for water to this 7,002,878 gallons, making- 
altogether 28,111,512 gallons at twenty-two shillings 
each. That is, £30,922,663, 4s., for whisky and gin 
alone, handed to the ruling and liquor vending 
classes, who receive this enormous annual sum from 
the millions of spirit- drinkers. 

To see this item in its true colours, it is necessary 
to consider the real value, or cost price of this liquor. 
It can be made with a profit at one shilling and 
fourpence a gallon. We have a price card of a distil- 
lery offering it ("proof") at one and threepence. It 
is averaged in the report of the Inland Revenue for 
1867 at one shilling and tenpence and two shillings 
and sixpence the proof gallon. The Report says — 
"The prices of British spirits, in the year 1866-67, 
varied between lis. 10d., and 12s. 6d." That is 
including 10s. of duty, and consequently, without 
duty, Is. lOd. and 2s. 6d. But 1866-67 was a year of 
high-priced grain, and consequently of high-priced 
spirits. In 1865-66 the price was as low as Is. 3d., 
as we see by the price card before us. We may 
* Oliver & Boyd's Almanac, 1870. Page 270. 



84 



Social Politics. 



"safely" take a general average price at two shillings 
the proof gallon ; that is, two shillings as the prime 
cost of that which sells, when diluted, at twenty-seven 
and sixpence ! Even if the article were itself good, 
and used for good purposes, the proportion of duty 
and profit which we thus indicate would be ruinous ; 
but when the article is bad and pernicious, so that it 
causes vast loss to the mass of the people, it is not 
possible for them to escape poverty under such a 
drain. But this is not all, nor half. 

The " malt liquor " bill is the next in importance, 
and it is truly enormous. In the estimates which 
we have seen, this is vastly understated. By the 
report of Inland Revenue for 1867, the bushels of 
malt on which duty was charged are stated by the 
Commissioners as 50,915,828.* Two bushels of 
malt give a barrel of strong beer — that is, 36 gal- 
lons, such as is sold to the publican at one shilling 
a gallon. -J- This is sold to the public at sixpence a 
quart, or, when taken in glasses, a good deal higher. 
What we must see as nearly as possible, in every 
such calculation as this, is the actual money that 
passes away from the hands of the mass of the 
people. Now, sixpence a quart is two shillings a 
gallon, or seventy-two shillings a barrel. It is 
estimated usually at forty-eight shillings ; but such 
an estimate is nearly as good as none, if we wish 
really to see how it is that the majority of the nation 
* See Report, page 8. 

t See Report on Malt Tax, Parliamentary Paper, 470, page 
13, 1867. 



Disastrous Exchange. 



85 



are becoming so miserably poor, and the minority 
so rich. The working man who drinks beer or 
porter (as the mass of Englishmen do) pays above 
seventy-two shillings for 36 gallons, and it is 
this which tells us the truth as to his poverty. 
What then is the gross sum calculated thus ? 
It is £93,467,854, 16s., for strong beer and porter 
alone ! 

The proportion of money we spend for nothing 
is truly incredible. In the evidence given on the 
malt tax, to which we have already referred, it is 
stated by Mr. Ellman, one of the witnesses called, 
that the beer that he himself brewed cost him 
19s. a barrel, and was a great deal better than that 
for which he paid 54s. He stated that he could 
make beer for 12s., as good as that sold to the 
publicans for 36s. (duty paid). He was stating 
the prime cost of this liquor if excise restrictions 
and duty were removed.* This shows us 12s. 
worth sold for 72s. ! That is, a shilling for twopence 
worth of liquor. But in the same parliamentary 
paper we have Mr. Rendalls evidence to the effect 
that he could produce beer at 30s. the 100 gallons, 
as good as that for which the brewer charges Is. a 
gallon ! The publican selling in glasses has above 
2s. a gallon for the same ! That is, 2s. for that 
the prime cost of which need not be above 
SJd. ! Though this is not so terribly outrageous 
as the spirit rate, let any man ask himself how 
* Parliamentary paper, 470, page 7G, 1SG7. 



86 



Social Politics. 



long it will be that a people who madly spend their 
earnings at this rate will keep out of consuming 
poverty ? 

The profits of the manufacturers of liquor are 
incredible. We know that one of our large joint- 
stock breweries divides among its shareholders as 
high as 30 per cent, of yearly dividend on their 
shares. It was stated, in connection with a state- 
ment by the Prime Minister in the House of 
Commons as to the duty paid by Mr. Bass, the 
great London brewer, that his profits were equal to 
£1,000 a day, Sabbaths included, throughout the 
whole year. Equally startling facts could be stated 
in abundance, if it were necessary. But one has 
only to look at the fact that £1,000 is laid out on 
the decorations of a single liquor shop, and by the 
returns drawn from the wretched dupes of the 
system the concern is found to pay, and that 
magnificently. When we know that not one 
farthing's worth of real good is given in return 
for the money thus given over to liquor men, is it 
difficult to see what must be the result ? 

When looking at such a point as this, we are 
reminded of the fearfully bad debts of the manu- 
facturers of liquor, and that these bad debts are 
enormous because of the duty. If, for example, 
a publican fails to pay a gallon of spirits, it would 
be but a loss of a shilling or so were it not for the 
tax ; but with that it is at least ten shillings more. 
So with beer to a smaller degree ; but the drinker 



B i sa st i \ ) u s Exch a nge 



87 



must pay for all this. He is not allowed to get 
into debt so as to become bankrupt to the publican. 
You can see him going with his bed and bolster on 
his shoulders to the pawnshop, — he may lie on the 
bare boards, but he must pay for his liquor ! 

We are reminded, too, of the malt used in beer ex- 
ported, which ought to be deducted from the sum of 
50,915,828 bushels; but there are items to counter- 
balance this drawback more than sufficiently. The 
sugar used in brewing has not been included in our 
estimate. There is also the fact that two bushels 
of malt produce a considerable quantity of the beer 
sold at sixpence a quart, beyond the barrel of 36 
gallons. In the report on the malt tax, to which 
we have already referred, this is abundantly evident. 
Then, 1867 was an exceptionally low year in malt- 
making. We are aiming at the actual money 
passing from the masses for this article, and we 
cannot but be under the mark in the estimate we 
have formed of the vast sum. 

We come now to foreign spirits. We take 1867 
again as a low year. We had 4,312,857 gallons of 
rum retained for home consumption that year. 
These are gallons at proof strength, and, when con- 
siderably reduced, sell at ninepence a gill over the 
counter — say we take them at the low rate of 27s. a 
gallon when they reach the drinkers hands. That 
is a sum of £5,822,056 for rum alone. We had then 
3,183,093 gallons of brandy. That sells at ninepence 
a glass (of which there are at least 88 in a gallon), 



88 



Social Politics. 



and so is a long way above £3 for that quantity.* 
That is £9,549,279 for brandy. There were then 
842,334 gallons of " other foreign and Colonial spirits 
These cannot be taken at less than the rum, and 
consequently give the sum of £1,137,250; while 
we leave out of sight altogether the cost of foreign 
wine introduced to the country. 

We come next to the account for tobacco, and 
may continue with 1867, as it was, in this particular, 
something of an average year. The amount of this 
article retained for home consumption in that year 
was 40,729,611 lbs. This at the ship would cost, in 
its lowest qualities, 6|d. a pound," and before it could 
pass the Custom House 3s. 6d. had to be added. It 
sells as low as 4s. a pound to the smoker of what 
is called " roll," and would be parted with by men 
(who pay as high as, in some cases, £31, 10s. annually 
as license money for the privilege of selling it) at 

* The following list of prices is taken from the printed circular 



of a large Spirit House in Leith : — 

Per Gallon. 

Brandy, Fine Pale, - 44/ 

Do. Brown and Pale, - - - 54/ 

Do. Pale, 10 Years Old, ... 60/ 

Do. Very Old, - 72/ to 85/ 

Do. Very very Old, - - - 112/ 



It will be seen from this that the loicest price is 44s. a gallon, 
while the liquor is sold as high as £5, 12s. ! In the liquor and 
tobacco trades, and in pawnbroking too, there is so much of 
deception that it is impossible to reach full estimates ; but we 
may rest perfectly sure of the loicness of those we have given 
above. 



Disastrous Exchange. 



89 



2s. 6d. a pound ! Four shillings' worth for 2s. 6d. 
All this is explained when we know that in the 
process of steeping and spinning, the weed takes up 
about 50 per cent, of water. We know as matter 
of custom's report that it takes 42*61, but as matter 
of fact as much as 53 per cent, can be spun into 
it ! If we include all items of expense, tobacco 
cannot cost the smokers less than 6s. 6d. a pound ; 
though nominally it is, at the lowest, only 3d. an 
ounce. That is £13,237,123 as the yearly tobacco 
bill. 

There is another serious item, which must be 
added to those which we have thus far noticed, 
in the enormous cost of the money advanced to 
the mass of drinkers by the pawnbrokers. This 
is as really money passing out of the hands of the 
many into those of the few as is that directly 
given for drink or tobacco, though we cannot get 
so near to its true amount as we can get to those 
sums directly paid for excisable goods. We may 
however form a not very incorrect estimate. In 
1861 there were 6,085 persons engaged in pawn- 
brokino; in the United Kingdom. If we take 
the loss in interest and pledges sustained in con- 
nection with each of these in the course of a year, 
it must be considerably above £200. In our large 
city establishments this would be a fractional affair 
indeed, and yet it adds £1,217,000 to our sad 
estimate of reckless squandering, which is so rapidly 
reducing the masses of the people to deadly poverty. 



90 



Social Politics. 



To make our account complete, it is necessary 
to acid one other item by estimate — that is, the 
drinks, such as cider and "Perry" (as it is called), 
of which we have no statistics. This is taken 
at the lowest as costing £1,500,000 yearly to 
the masses who consume it. It is set down at 
this sum in the low estimate of the Companion 
to the British Almanac for 1870, and might 
be set clown correctly at a considerably higher 
amount. 

What is then the great sum of actual money 
which flows in this most iniquitous channel ? 
Home spirits, £30,922,663 ; beer, £93,467,854 ; 
rum, £5,822,056; brandy, £9,549,279; other foreign, 
spirits, £1,137,250; tobacco, £13,237,123; pawn- 
broking, £1,217,000; unspecified drinks, £1,500,000. 
That gives us the terrible total of £156,852,225. 
From what we know of the private ways of the 
liquor trade especially, and also from the enormous 
losses of the pawn system, we feel perfectly sure 
that this annual sum, vast as it is, comes a good 
way below the truth ; and it passes all from the 
lower orders in society, and in by far its largest 
half it passes to a small and already wealthy 
fragment of the people. He who gives the time 
and thought to this subject, which is beyond all 
question its due, will have no hesitancy as to 
how the land is escaping from the mass of the 
community. 



91 



CHAPTER XXIII. 
WAGES, DRINK, AND TOBACCO. 

One of the most curious things that strike one 
in studying our Social Politics, is the manner in 
which the mass of the labouring people are de- 
ceived in the matter of wages. If we take the 
sum which we have shown to be paid for drink 
and tobacco by the lower to the higher class, it 
is considerably above £5 a year for each person, 
young and old, male and female, in the entire 
population affected ! If we take off 500,000, or if 
you will, 1,000,000 for the really upper class, and 
leave 29,000,000 as the lower, the sum shows about 
£5, 7s. for each person annually paid for worse 
than nothing, so far as social prosperity goes, 
That is, £26, 15s. from every family of five souls, 
which is above ten shillings a week from the 
winnings of every such family. 

If we look at those struggles that are now so 
common, in which workmen "strike" for higher 
wages, and sometimes employers "lock out" their 
workmen because of combinations for this and 
similar purposes, w r e cannot find any evidence 
of an idea that rises to a wage such as would 
cover the dreadful expenditure to which we are 
thus directing attention. A shilling a week of 



92 



Social Politics. 



advance is deemed worth many weeks of entire 
loss of wages among workmen. Sixpence a day, 
that is three shillings a week, would be deemed 
something utterly extravagant, if men were to 
stand out for such an advance. But here are ten 
shillings a week going at the rate of a shilling, 
and even two shillings, for a pennyworth of worse 
than useless stuff, without either strike or com- 
plaint on the part of those who pay it ! 

Then see how the raising of wages affects the mass 
of the people in connection with this vast drain 
for liquor and tobacco. House rent in our larger 
towns has risen till anything like a wholesome 
dwelling is beyond the reach of the average 
workman. Everything depending for its price 
chiefly on labour is equally raised. "Why is this? 
Almost entirely because wages are so much raised. 
So far as working men must use the produce of their 
own labour, so far they must pay the advance on 
their own labour. Nothing can be clearer than 
this. Let all the men employed in raising a block 
of workmen's houses, from the quarrymen to the 
painters who finish the work, have short hours 
and high wages, and no power on earth will make 
the rents of these houses low. The men who 
occupy these houses must pay these high rents. 
And so is it with all other produce of labour ; in 
proportion as wages are high that must be high 
also. There is consequently an immense drawback 
on high wages in the increased expenditure which 



Wages, Drink, and Tobacco. 



93 



they necessarily involve on the part of working 
men. From the vast number that have to be 
housed, clothed, and fed at the direct expense of 
the labouring class, this drawback is serious indeed. 
Few are aware of the extent of this increase of 
expenditure caused to the workman by any advance 
of wages. It is difficult — we might almost say 
impossible — to get the attention of working men 
generally turned to the subject; but that makes 
the drawback none the less. It only makes them 
wonder and despair when they find that high wages 
do so little to improve their social condition. 

But there is no drawback in favour of the masses 
to counterbalance the tremendous outlay of ten 
shillings weekly for each family on drink and to- 
bacco. The drawbacks are all the other way. The 
rich man who is enriched by the liquor traffic has 
a trifle more to pay for the labour he employs, but 
that is nothing to him ; and it is next to no help to 
the workman who is giving all he gets back again 
in this ruinous way. A very little drink and to- 
bacco is sufficient to cover all the extra cost of 
labour. But there are terrible drawbacks in con- 
nection with these on the workman. Ten shillings 
spent weekly by a family on these articles will 
cause five shillings less to come into that family. 
In the case of a joiner who spent less than ten shil- 
lings a week, we should say, his wages were ex- 
amined for eight weeks before he took the pledge 
of abstinence, for eight weeks during which he kept 



94 



Social Politics. 



the pledge, and for eight weeks after he broke it. 
The difference against the drinking time was above 
seven shillings a week. This was drawback indeed 
— but on the same side as that of higher wages — 
against the poor deluded man and his poorer family. 
The sum with which we are dealing represents ten 
shillings given away with the result of seven shil- 
lings less won ! 

There is another drawback too important not to 
be mentioned in this connection. The family out of 
which ten shillings a week go for liquor and tobacco, 
and in which seven shillings less are won on that 
account, must always buy in the dearest market. 
Ready money is a thing unknown to great numbers 
of our labouring millions. The " bad debts " made 
in those districts where vast numbers of workmen 
live are incredibly large and regular. The work- 
man, as a rule, has nothing, or next to nothing, to 
lift in wages, if he buys from a " store " at the work 
where he is employed. If he does purchase at that 
store he has a high per centage generally to pay on 
his goods ; and if he buy on such credit as is pre- 
carious in a high degree, he must pay a higher per 
centage still. But how can he help himself and 
yet give ten shillings a week away for worse than 
nothing ? The whole thing is against him, and can 
be against him only, so long as this terrible decep- 
tion holds its power over him. 

One of the most serious disadvantages of the 
masses is that which arises from the competitions of 



Wages, Drink, and Tobacco. 



95 



poverty. Look, for example, to an acre of land in 
one of our suburbs, with such a house on it as will 
let for a rent of £100 a year. Then look to an acre 
of surface in one of our crowded "closes," say in 
Edinburgh. The houses on that acre will draw nearly 
£700 annually. How is this explained? Simply 
by the difference in competition for the house room 
on these different acres. A mere den in the crowd, 
which will let at £5 a year, will be sought for by 
twenty tenants for one who will look at the house 
rented at £100. For twenty such dens there will 
be twenty times twenty after them, if they are to 
let. This arises from the stern necessity which 
makes it impossible for our poor families to pay the 
higher rents of £10, £12, and £16 a year, at which 
houses at all tolerable can be had. The competi- 
tion springing out of this state of things is truly 
dreadful ; and with £26, 10s., for each family, of 
positive waste, and worse than waste, no remedy 
can be found in the nature of things. 

Some will no doubt think that we are exaowrat- 
ino; the drawbacks on the workino* classes in these 
statements; but no one will think so who has given 
himself the trouble of examining, even in a very 
slight degree, the real facts of the case. A friend of 
ours, who lives in a mining district, tells us that he 
took the number of families and that of the public 
houses in the district. Allowing only two pounds 
sterling as the weekly profit of each public house 
— that is, two pounds a week with which to pay 



96 Social Politics. 

all expenses, and reward the keeper of the house 
for his trouble — the amount spent in these houses 
was as high as fifteen shillings for every family 
in the neighbourhood, each week of the year. 
It is scarcely necessary to say that his calculation 
as to profit was set low. We are putting the 
tobacco along with the drink, and finding ten 
shillings as the average expenditure ; and it is 
only folly to put it lower, or to keep out of sight 
the drawbacks to which we have referred. It is 
curious to hear men of mind and mark constantly 
speaking of it as erring on the " safe side " to put 
the estimate in this fearful matter low. Suppose a 
firm who should conduct their business on the idea 
that it was erring on the "safe side" to put their 
expenditure at 50 per cent, below the truth, what 
would the nature of the safety be ? Would it not 
be a rather more satisfactory safety if they put it 
10 per cent, above the truth ? There can be no 
doubt on the point. We are not putting the case 
above the mark but below it, and yet our error is not 
on the safe side, but on that of just such danger as 
has led thousands of our productive classes down to 
that horrid poverty that is moving hearts of stone 
to feel for them. 



97 



CHAPTER XXIY. 
IMPROVIDENCE. 

The mistake that is made in blaming the lower 
classes for their recklessness is so great and so cruel 
that we feel as if it merited a distinct chapter to 
itself alone. We have put the mere money given 
away for drink and tobacco at ten shillings weekly 
for every family of five persons. That would be 
two shillings a week for each person. If it were 
true that each unit in the lower class population 
spent that sum on these things, it might be reason- 
able to speak of the folly of the class in the way too 
often done. Or, if the families who spend nothing, 
or next to nothing, on these things were excluded, 
and it could be truthfully said that each unit of the 
families really affected spent three shillings weekly, 
there might be some reason for the charge of im- 
providence against the mass. But no such thing 
can be truthfully said, as all must know who think 
at all on the subject. 

Men, women, and children are so related that the 
folly of one cannot possibly be confined in its effects 
to that one alone. All must see this by very slight 
thought on the relations of human beings. Here, 
for example, is a man earning good wages, but his 
wife has got fascinated with the drink which has 

H 



98 



Social Politics. 



such power to lead women to destruction. In defiance 
of his utmost effort he finds himself without even 
decent clothing to appear in his place of worship on 
the Sabbath. Not only are all his wages gone, but 
even his very clothing, and the very bed on which 
he should lie, is sold ! Is it anything short of 
cruelty to speak of that mans improvidence ? Take 
another example. There is a wife who is yoked to 
a husband who patronizes the public house and 
tobacconist. She does her very utmost to save at 
every corner, yet her utmost is utterly vain, and 
both herself and her children are steeped in poverty 
by the expenditure of her husband. Does not that 
woman feel the sting of an unmerited reproach 
when she hears her class denounced as improvident, 
and their poverty spoken of as the result of their 
own folly ? But take another case. There is both 
father and mother doing their very best to bring up 
and provide for their family, and by the fascination 
of liquor and tobacco taking effect on one son, they 
find the whole of them kept down in miserable 
poverty. Is not the charge of improvidence in such 
a case positively cruel ? There, again, is the trades- 
man and small trader, who are doing their utmost to 
win an honest living, and to do well for their 
families, but they are actually beggared by the 
failure of those who have sent most of their earnings 
through the public house. Is the charge of " impro- 
vidence" fair against men and women who have 
risked their all to help starving families in a time 



Improvidence. 



99 



of need, and are rewarded by seeing the money 
which ought to have been paid to them secured by 
the publican 2 Those who spend their money in drink 
are no fair representatives of their class. They are 
a minority, when we take all, old and young, who are 
reduced to destitution by their folly. And hence 
nothing can be more unfair than to speak of this 
gigantic evil as the improvidence of the humbler 
classes. 

The whole charge of improvidence is a mistake, 
to say the least of it. To see this we shall take a 
community of miners, say of a hundred families. 
There is no public house near them, nor any shop 
for selling tobacco. They are free from both of 
these ways of drawing off money from the many 
into the pockets of the few. Only a very small sum 
of taxation of any kind is paid by these families. 
They soon show signs of prosperity. Strikes and 
such things are unknown among them. But a set 
of so-called " Justices " license a liquor vendor, who 
sells tobacco also among these people. A certain 
portion of men and women will be acted upon suc- 
cessfully in the course of a few weeks — perhaps in 
the course of a few days. The number will be 
gradually increased, until from the families in that 
village, with very few exceptions, there will go out 
as much as ten shillings weekly from each family, 
for worse than nothing. Now, is it fair to charge 
that village, as a whole, with improvidence ? The 
whole people are kept down ; but it is not even by 



100 



Social Politics. 



the improvidence of the few, but by their weakness 
under the potent spell which destroys thousands of 
the very best men in all ranks in society. 

For what end do the " Justices" license the liquor 
dealer ? There is just one possible answer to this 
question in the light of fact, because there is just 
one end of a profitable character that can be gained. 
That end is the passing of ten shillings weekly from 
each of the families of that labouring community 
into the pockets of that class to which the " Jus- 
tices " belong. That is, £50 a week going to swell 
the income of the upper class, — and that is no mean 
sum. We ought not, perhaps, to wonder when we 
see a lot of " Justices" grant three or four licenses 
for a village where every householder remonstrates 
against the granting of one. If four can ply their 
traffic successfully, it will probably be as good as 
£200 a week added to the income of upper class 
men, and those who gather for them. But is it 
not too bad to speak of this as the " improvidence " 
of the lower classes ? We have known a husband 
come into the house after a night's drinking, in which 
he had spent all he could lay hands on. His wife 
had just sixpence in coppers to get food for the day 
for herself and child — six coppers which she and 
not he had won. He threatened her life if she did 
not give these coppers. She gave them, telling him 
they were her last. He took threepence halfpenny 
and gave her back the rest — went and gave what 
he had taken for half a gill of liquor. He was in- 



Improvidence. 



101 



sane with the dreadful thirst of the drunkard. He 
gave threepence farthing for absolutely nothing, 
and the remaining farthing for the very liquor 
that had cursed him and his. When you license 
men to bring about this sort of thing, what shall 
we call your cant about the "improvidence" of 
these lower classes ? It is not easy to find the 
proper word. 

Poor frail humanity can be tempted. He who 
thinks himself the strongest is often the first to fall 
when the trial comes. It is consequently a tremen- 
dous affair to bring temptation to bear on men. 
Blessed is he that endureth it ; but what shall be 
said of him who organizes it, licenses it by law, and, 
when its victims are perishing, plumes himself on 
his " providence," and speaks of the " improvidence " 
of those led astray ? We must leave the terrible 
subject. 



102 



CHAPTER XXV. 

MONEY AND LAND. 

The most striking feature of the result of our 
present Social Politics is found in the dreadful 
dearth of land. There is a positive famine of space 
in which men may live and breathe. As in all 
other cases of famine, that which has become so 
dear and scarce to the people as a whole, is accu- 
mulated in the ownership of a few. Let us look 
at this in connection with the money matters we 
have just been considering. 

The sum of £26, 15s. yearly, in the case of any 
family, saved, would in a very few years purchase 
a goodly quantity of land. We have taken the 
average rent at two pounds an acre. At twenty 
years' purchase that would be forty pounds as the 
purchase money of that extent of land. Take it 
at twenty-two years' purchase, and it is forty-four 
pounds. That is, less than two years' drink and 
tobacco money as all that is required to put an 
acre of good land into the possession of such a 
family. There are hundreds of our labouring 
families who, if they were directly and indirectly 
free from the drain of the liquor and tobacco 
traffic, would be perfectly able for this in two years. 
This is no matter of theory or speculation. It 



Money and Land. 



103 



is simply a matter of irresistible fact. Five years 
of such deliverance would give such a family a 
good house, even at present rates, and an acre of 
land on which to place it. Just such houses as 
could be wished for working families are raised 
in many parts of this country for £80 each, and 
five years of the saving we indicate would give 
more than the price of the land and houses also. 

There is an idea that the law of entail, and also 
that " feudal tenure," are barriers in the way of 
the free sale of land. We shall probably soon 
see the last of these unrighteous laws. But what 
will be the effect if the drain to which we are 
calling attention is allowed to continue ? Only 
that a few rich men will be able with somewhat 
greater advantage to purchase land. Lawyers will 
suffer a loss of work and fees. That is all. Work- 
ing men, if really able, will have a small advantage 
in this also, should they purchase land; but that 
will be as nothing when compared with £26, 15s. 
a year for every family of five in their whole class. 

There is a law, which no entail can hinder in its 
operation, constantly at work in redistributing the 
land of a country. It is that law by which luxury 
and idleness bring poverty even to the son of a 
millionaire. You see an old and supremely careful 
duke die, and leave untold wealth to his successor. 
The young duke revels a few years, and dies far 
from rich. Another duke follows, and is soon at the 
disposal of his creditors. Another soon follows him 



104 



Social Politics. 



in the same track, and in defiance of all human law 
the land comes into the market. In this way vast 
estates are ready for the highest bidder. Men who 
give away £26, 15s. a year for worse than nothing 
are not in a position to compete with those who get 
the money. Few things can be plainer than that. 
One man who has got this sum from a thousand 
families, as some brewers have, will not find much 
difficulty in having his own terms, in spite of all 
even that thousand families can do to hinder ! But 
while this is plain enough, it is just as plain that, if 
the thousand families had retained their money, 
there would be no such rich man to compete with 
them in the case. Careful and right-minded land- 
owners, who are living honourably on the rent of the 
land which they honourably occupy, and who are 
doing their best to improve it to the utmost, have 
no desire to add field to field that they may dwell 
alone in the earth. Such men believe in their duty 
as fully as they believe in their rights, so that they 
are in no danger of competing with those in a more 
humble position, with a view to keep them off the 
land. Many of these men have cleared off th^ 
abomination of the public house from their estates 
of their own free will. But it is not so with the 
men who receive the proceeds of this grand wrong. 
It is not to be looked for that it should be so with 
them. Nor does it signify how it is with them, 
were not the wrong upheld by the entire force of 
British law. Let that wrong be suppressed by, the 



Money and Land. 



105 



law as it is now upheld, and there could be no 
difficulty about the transfer of land. There is 
always abundance of that commodity in the market 
when there are rich enough persons to buy it, and 
with the sums we have indicated remaining with 
the masses, there would soon be abundance of 
purchasers. 

In this connection, too, it is to be kept in mind 
that the money question is not the only one. The 
whole of the arable land of Scotland is no small sur- 
face, and if the money for drink were saved, that 
land would also be saved from its present terrible 
abuse. It is not only true that it would be avail- 
able for food, for it would be equally available for 
any purpose to which land can be devoted. That 
amount of spare soil would be really in the market. 
One of the first things considered in reference to 
some of the finest farms in England is now, whether 
they will give good barley for malting purposes. 
Suppress the liquor traffic, and that purpose is gone. 
It would then be considered how to grow the best 
grain for food, or perhaps how to dispose of the land 
at a sufficiently high rate as to make half the 
breadth yield as good an income as the whole does 
now. With £26, 15s. a year added to the wealth of 
every family of five in the kingdom, it would not 
be difficult to dispose of land so as to make one 
half the breadth yield twice the present income. 
Now, the land is of exorbitant value only near the 
fearfully crowded centres of population; then, it 



106 



Social Politics. 



would be much more equalized in value, but still 
easily accessible to the mass of the people. 

How little do the masses dream that something 
like this is involved in Sir Wilfred Lawson's Per- 
missive Bill ? We doubt if Sir Wilfred himself sees 
it. He is bent on securing something that would 
bring about sobriety among men now degraded 
with intemperance. He thinks of crime and pau- 
perism, with all the immoralities of liquor. But if 
he thinks, he does not say much of the certainty of 
the people, when putting liquor, as at present sold, 
away from them, spreading themselves on the sur- 
face of the land. Possibly the United Kingdom 
Alliance think little of such a result. Certainly 
they do not say much about it. But as certainly 
the masses who are chiefly interested think little, if 
at all, on such a subject. The opponents of suppres- 
sion think more clearly. Those men who pocket 
the £26, 15s. a year from hundreds, and even 
thousands of families, and find themselves the lords 
of the soil, are alive to the change involved in the 
Permissive Bill. It is their interests that are 
threatened by that measure. They will yield it 
only when the overwhelming force of public senti- 
ment compels them. 

This makes it all the more important that the 
true nature of the battle should be understood. We 
are apt to fight as if for one thing when we are 
really fighting for a very different thing. Hence 
we are apt to have foes in those who would other- 



Money and; Land. 



107 



wise be friends, and only sham friends in those who 
should be open foes. It will be a strange thing 
indeed, if once working men are fully aware that 
they are paying at the rate of £26, 15s. a family for 
worse than nothing, every year, because of the in- 
famous license system, should they be found failing 
to vote down the man who is brazen-faced enough 
to ask their votes to enable him to uphold it. They 
really uphold such men now and put them actually 
into Parliament. Many of them join in hooting 
down the speakers and candidates who propose to 
deliver them from the hands of their plunderers ! 
But all this is the result of that incredible ignor- 
ance in which so many who can read, write, and 
cipher too, are still held. It will be otherwise if 
once they were really " educated." 



• 



108 



CHAPTER XXVL 
INCIDENCE OF TAXATION. 

One of the ways in which we see how the liquor 
and tobacco traffic is weighing upon the masses is 
that of observing the reduction and increase of 
taxation as these go on in our present system. 
For example, we go back to 1863, which was 
the last of three years of high income tax, and 
we observe that in the aggregate, that which is 
strictly upper and middle class taxation — called 
Stamps, Taxes, and Property and Income Tax" — 
amounted to £22,711,000. In 1868 this had fallen 
to £19,227,000. There was consequently £3,484,000 
less paid by these classes in 1868 than was in 1863. 
If we then take spirits, malt, and tobacco, through 
the purchase of which the labouring masses pay their 
chief taxation, there was an increase of revenue to 
the extent of £4,299,651. There was a reduction 
of £3,600,000 on tea, which so far benefited the 
toiling millions; but even if we could credit the 
whole of that to their account, it would still appear 
that they had a serious increase of taxation at the 
same time that those in better circumstances had 
a great reduction. By the increased amount paid 
on liquor and tobacco in those years, the poorer 
classes were keeping up to its high level the ex- 



Incidence of Taxation. 



109 



penditure of the country, and enabling the higher 
classes to relieve themselves, through their special 
taxes and their large share in the reduction on tea, 
to the extent of something like £5,000,000 annually. 

There is a way of reasoning on this which betrays 
almost absolute ignorance of political economy. 
It is held to be the right and just way to make 
the wasteful pay the chief burdens of the State. 
This might be all very well if these same wasteful 
ones were the non-productive portion of society, 
who either could not, or would not be of any use 
to the general community. But instead of this, 
they are the very men, women, and children, on 
whom the community depend absolutely for the 
bread they eat, the clothing they wear, and the 
houses in which they live. There is not one 
morsel of bread that the Queen herself puts into her 
mouth that was not produced from the soil by the 
toil of the labourer. Put down that labourer, and 
where are those who live only because he effectively 
toils ? Disable that labourer, and who shall give 
the same amount of needed produce to the com- 
munity? Diminish in any way the efficiency of 
our productive classes, and by what process con- 
ceivable will you make the nation prosperous ? 
Take an illustration. There is a traveller, and 
the only horse he has to carry him over his 
journey is not so well-behaved as he might be. 
He thinks the animal deserves to be shot, and he 
shoots him ! Then how shall he get over his 



110 



Social Politics. 



journey ? That the refractory brute deserved to 
be so treated, if that were true, would not go far 
to help the infatuated traveller ! 

But such an illustration gives us only one aspect 
of the case. We must return to the anxiety of the 
" Justices " as to licensing places for the sale of 
liquor among working populations. It is this base 
business of license that creates the wasteful habits of 
those whom it is deemed right to fleece so freely in 
the way of taxation. It is really wicked to insist 
that the people are improvident and wasteful when 
they cry out with one voice against the temptations 
of the liquor shops, and have these temptations 
thrust upon them by such " Justices/' It is of no 
use to try to hide the truth. These " Justices" 
manage to place £5,000,000 annually on their own 
side of the account by the taxation movements on 
which we are now remarking, and that in spite of 
the remonstrances of the great majority of the 
people on whom they operate. They lower their 
own state expenses by this amount at the same time 
that they increase that expenditure for the poorer 
class by more than an equal sum. They weaken to 
this extent, by this management alone, the very 
hands upon whose industry they depend for even 
their daily food. This is one of the most unwise, as 
well as unrighteous things that men could do. No 
doubt the people on whom the iniquity is practised 
are ignorant and foolish ; but they are, after all, the 
people by whose energy alone we can continue to 



Incidence of Taxation. Ill 

exist as a nation, and surely no folly can be greater 
than to think of enriching the state by their degra- 
dation. 

But we must not forget that the proper parties to 
address on this subject are the working classes 
themselves. There is but a minority of these classes 
that are blind enough not to see that the legislation 
of the kingdom in those matters now before us is 
all dead against them. We surely cannot come to 
the conclusion that a majority of working men can 
rejoice in millions of reduction in taxation which 
they do not pay, accompanied with millions of 
increase in taxation which they do pay. Their 
heads have not become so absolutely wooden that 
they can fail to see how the game goes. And they 
have the remedy in their own hands. Instead of 
tamely begging a government which has beggared 
them to ship them off to distant shores, they may 
be expected to demand of that government to sup- 
press the wrong that has brought them to such a 
pass. 



112 



CHAPTER XXVII. 
EMIGRATION. 

So long as there is inhabitable surface on the earth 
not yet occupied, it is probable we shall have emi- 
gration. This abstract thoiight, however, has very 
little to do with the actual facts of emigration as 
it now goes on. It is, as we have seen, a great 
delusion for men to think that our emigrants are 
going away from us because there is no room for 
them in their native land. It is a still greater delu- 
sion to imagine that it is a relief to those who 
remain behind to be quit of those who go. If our 
readers will give us a little careful attention, we 
may be able to make the truth clear as to our situ- 
ation in this important matter. 

In 1815, the total emigration from the United 
Kingdom was 2,081 — in 1866, it had risen to 
204,882. That is such an increase as may well 
arrest the attention of all who feel interested in 
their country. There were higher years than 1866 ; 
but these had to do with the gold fever, and need 
not be taken into account in our present paper. In 
1852, for example, the number of emigrants rose to 
368,764 ; but 87,881 of these went to Australia or 
New Zealand. It is to the steady flow of nearly 
200,000 persons a year, as reached from the small 



Emigration. 



113 



beginning — 2,081 in 1815 — that it is interesting to 
turn attention. 

And yet it is far more interesting to consider the 
destination of these emigrants. The number from 
1815 gives a grand total of 6,106,392 persons, and 
of these no less than 5,044,809 went to North 
America. Large as the Australian and Xew 
Zealand exodus has been, it reached only 929,181 
in 1866 ; that is, it had not reached one million when 
the American had gone beyond six. It is import- 
ant, too, to notice that by far the largest number 
of our emigrants to America go to the United 
States. In 1866 those to the " colonies" were 
13,255, while to the States they reached the high 
number of 161,000. It is therefore very clear that 
it is with America we have specially to do in con- 
sidering the bearing's of this vast and growing 
emigration. The States of America are not noiu a 
new country. They begin to have all the charac- 
teristics of an old established nation, especially in 
their northern and eastern portions. New England 
is a well peopled region of the world ; and, to as 
great an extent as Old England, it may be regarded 
as a manufacturing country, and certainly not a 
land remaining to be occupied. An emigration 
from Britain to these States is not a going forth 
to subdue the wilds of the earth's surface, but to 
increase the population of large manufacturing 
centres. 

This leads us, however, to notice further, the 

I 



114 



Social Politics. 



nationality of the emigrants going from us. Up to 
1847 the emigration was from Ireland in a very 
much larger proportion than from the rest of the 
empire. During the following eight years the flow 
from Ireland became comparatively low, though it 
still keeps up to a high rate. The emigration from 
Scotland was next in importance to that of Ireland, 
when the extent of our population is taken into 
account. England, with six times as many people 
as Scotland, sent but few emigrants till of late years. 
The Irish emigration was so great that in 1851 the 
census revealed a deficiency in the population 
amounting to 2,555,720. That is, had Ireland had 
no emigration in the ten years previous to 1851, she 
would have had 2,555,720 people more than were 
actually in the island. In 1861 there had been a 
positive decrease of 751,251, instead of an increase 
of a much larger figure, and it is anticipated that 
there will be a still more important decrease in 
1871. In 1851, but more so in 1861, Scotland was 
found to be affected in a somewhat similar way, 
though not to the extent of producing an actual 
decrease in the number of the people. Instead of 
an increase of 12 or 13 per cent., as was in former 
decades, there was only one of 6 per cent, from 
1851 to 1861. The rate of increase in England and 
Wales had not been sensibly affected. Now the 
chief stream of emigration is flowing from England. 
In the first or winter quarter of the year 1869 the 
emigration was 2,702 Scotch, 9,800 Irish, and 11,110 



Emigration. 



115 



English. It need not be told any one who thinks 
and reads at all on the subject that it is now in 
England almost exclusively we have excitement 
in connection with emigration. And we may 
assuredly calculate that the census of 1871, and far 
more fully that of 1881, if matters go on as now, 
will reveal a decrease in the population south of the 
Tweed. 

What is the great relation in which these three 
kingdoms stand to each other and mankind ? Ireland 
is agricultural and pastoral ; so is Scotland to a 
great extent; England is the workshop for these 
and for the world. There is a small manufacturing 
power in Ireland, a much greater in Scotland, but 
by far the greatest of all in England. This explains 
how emigration did not set in on England, or on 
Scotland, as it has done on Ireland. It also explains 
why it did not till now affect England as it has 
affected Scotland. A pastoral people are the first to 
emigrate in the course of nature. An agricultural 
people are the next in order. From a land like this 
a manufacturing people would never emigrate if 
matters were right. The climate and mineral store 
of this country are such that no other country can 
at present compete with it in manufacturing power, 
if the natural course of things were followed. Even 
our shepherds have an immense advantage at home, 
and our farmers have a still greater advantage, but 
our manufacturers have so great facilities as can 
scarcely at present be equalled. It is, consequently, 



116 



Social Politics. 



matter of extreme interest when we rind that 
England is emigrating. 

It introduces us to the mining, mechanical, and 
manufacturing character of our emigrants now. 
There are above 70,000 souls in the east end of 
London who must emigrate speedily or die. They 
are being shipped off as fast as charity and Govern- 
ment can transport them to North America. Above 
25,000 of these are workmen more or less skilled in 
engineer and shipbuilding occupations. These are 
not shepherds, nor are they ploughmen, nor will 
they ever be to any great extent one or the other. 
They are mechanics, and will be so go where they 
may. In the vast hives of industry in Lancashire 
there are a greater number who must emigrate or 
die. These are getting off as fast as they possibly 
can to Massachusetts to find full occupation in 
cotton. Not one is either pastoral or agricultural, 
and few are likely ever to be either. Irishmen and 
Scotchmen can be anything, but not so Englishmen, 
and they will not need to be anything in the world 
but what they have been. Their skill is too valu- 
able to be sent to the backwoods when abundance 
of rough hands are there already, and skilled men 
are needed to make a great country fit to manu- 
facture for itself. Till within the last four years 
our emigrants were chiefly pastoral and agricultural, 
now they are chiefly mining, mechanical, and manu- 
facturing. It is to this that we feel it of such- 
importance to call attention. Our position as a 



Emigration. 



117 



nation depends, to a great extent, upon our useful- 
ness to the world in a mechanical and manufacturing 
line. Commerce has its being in the fact that one 
nation is so situated that it excels in one thing, 
while another excels in another. It is in the 
•exchange of produce that all trade lies, and such 
exchange clearly depends on the excelling we have 
mentioned. If this nation loses its excellence in 
manufacturing power it loses its only possible share 
in the exchange of the world, and its commerce dfes. 

We must also look at the effect of emigration on 
the character of the population left behind. How 
do the Emigration Commissioners account for the 
vast deficiencies in the population of Ireland ? More 
than two millions and a half of deficiency was 
double the emigration, but it was accounted for by 
the fact that the young men and women had gone 
off to such a degree that marriages and births had 
fallen off sufficiently to account for all. " The pro- 
portion of persons between the ages of twenty and 
thirty-five," in the ordinary settled course of society, is 
about 25 per cent. — that proportion among emigrants 
is above 52 per cent. This is not the only matter of 
consideration at this point. Miss Rye, in a letter to 
the Times, some months since, said — " I will not, I 
-dare not, spend my time in passing bad people from 
one port to another." And " bad people" cannot, as a 
rule, pass themselves ; they have generally no inclin- 
ation to do so. No doubt bad enough people go, 
but that is not the rule. We dare not now send 



118 



Social Politics. 



our criminals abroad, nor dare we send our paupers, 
nor should we be allowed to send any class unfit to 
support themselves. It is the best of our mechanical 
and manufacturing hands that are now going, and 
they are leaving the proportion of those who burden 
society largely increased. It is amusing to read in 
journals of good and even high standing that our 
only remedy for our helpless poor is to ship them 
off to other lands ! One can hardly believe his own 
eyes when he sees such absurdity placed before the 
world with all the solemn dignity of journalism in 
influential places. It needs but half an hour s 
reading on the part of a ploughboy to enable 
him to perceive that such writing is only solemn 
nonsense. 



119 



CHAPTER XXV1IL 
DIMINISHING FORCE. 

Nothing can be more self-evident than that the 
wealth of a people depends on the largeness of the 
number who produce as compared with that of those 
who only consume. If by any means the producers 
are diminished while the consumers are increased 
in number, the prosperity of that community must 
be lowered. And yet this is the sure and certain 
effect of emigration, as it goes on from this country 
now. 

Our productive workmen above twenty years of 
age number about 4,500,000. We exclude all our 
men under twenty years of age, as well as all 
women workers, for the very clear reason that as a 
whole these produce only about as much as they 
themselves consume. Very many of them do more, 
but a still greater number do less ; and hence they 
cannot be taken as forming any part of that labour- 
ing power by which the unproductive population of 
a country is sustained. It is not to these classes 
that we can rationally look for that on the amount 
of which prosperity essentially depends. We there- 
fore must regard these 4,500,000 men as the pro- 
ductive force of the nation, so far as human skill 
and labour go. We exclude the vast number who 



120 



Social Politics. 



are employed in police, prison, and similar labour, 
together with the criminals who supply the occa- 
sion for that labour, as well as all others who are 
consuming, but not adding in the least, directly or 
indirectly, to the common store. 

It at once suggests itself as a question of grave 
interest whether, in proportion to the great non- 
producing force which only consumes, these pro- 
ductive workmen are proportionally diminishing or 
increasing. Without any deduction we should have 
23,500,000 to be provided for by the labour of 
4,500,000. This would not be extravagant if there 
were no drawback, for one able-bodied man can 
produce easily for seven, or even for nine persons. 
But to be somewhat exact, we must deduct all those 
under twenty years of age among the men, and all 
those women who work for something like their own 
support at least. These are no burden upon any 
one. They amount to 502,753 in Scotland alone, 
and at least eirfit times that number in England 

o o 

and Ireland, and so leave 18,976,223 as the strictly 
non-productive portion of society to be balanced by 
the 4,500,000 able-bodied producers. Among these 
we have all the children, and the women engaged 
usefully in attending to them, or to themselves and 
others, together with all the disabled in any way. 
But we have also, as we have said, all the criminal 
and pauper classes, together with all who attend 
directly and indirectly upon these. If any or all of 
these classes are increasing in proportion to the 



Diminishing Force. 121 

productive classes, who do more than sustain them- 
selves, the burdens are certainly becoming heavier, 
and the nation is to that extent becoming less able 
to keep its position in the world. 

Here, then, the character of our emigration stands 
first for notice. The proportion of persons in 
ordinary old country society between the ages of 
twenty and thirty-five is 25 per cent., while in the 
case of emigrants it is nearly 53 per cent. Let us look 
into this. We assume that our emigration for 1869 
shall turn out to have been 200,000. It will probably 
be found to have been more, but take it at that. In 
this we have as many as 106,000 persons capable of 
productive labour, while among 200,000 in ordinary 
society we should have only 50,000. It is quite true 
that these are not all working men so as to belong* to 
the class numbered at 4,500,000, but a very large 
majority of them are, while only a minority remain 
among those left behind. When, however, we 
endeavour rightly to estimate the number of pro- 
ductive workers anion o; emigrants and anion & home 
society we must reduce the amount by some thousands 
in both cases on account of non-productive persons of 
the ages implied. Every emigrant above twenty or 
under thirty-five is not a productive worker, nor is 
every person in ordinary society of such age. But 
a much larger proportion of such emigrants are 
productive than of those in ordinary society. It is 
thus that we put down nearly 100,000 out of the 
200,000 in the one case, and 40,000 in the other. 



122 



Social Politics. 



We take off 6,000 from the emigrants, and 10,000 
from those in society of an ordinary character. 

This suggests to us a subject of the very gravest 
consideration. That will appear if we take 400,000 
persons as they stand in society before any of them 
emigrate, and look at the manner in which emiora- 
tion affects them. At the rate of 25 per cent, we have 
100,000 among these 400,000 who are above twenty 
years of age, and under thirty-five. Now, suppose 
that 200,000 out of the 400,000 emigrate ; among 
these emigrants, if there were 53 per cent, of persons 
between the ages specified, there would be 106,000. 
This is impossible, as there were not so many of 
such ages to begin with — but the emigrants have 
taken every person between twenty and thirty-five 
with them ! Had there been 6,000 more, they 
would have taken them all still ! They have left 
200,000 persons out of the 400,000 under twenty or 
above thirty-five ! But you say rightly that this is 
not likely to occur among so small a population. 

Well, try it with one larger. Say we have a popu- 
lation of 600,000. Among these we have only 150,000 
between the ages of twenty and thirty-five. Let us 
suppose that 200,000 emigrate from among these. 
They take with them 106,000 persons between the 
ages in question. They consequently leave only 
9,000 such persons in a population of 400,000 — that 
is, 9,000 to 391,000! Well, it is probably said 
again, that such an emigration cannot occur from so 
small a population. 



Dim in ishing Force. 



123 



Let us see then how it affects 28,000,000. We 
have taken these imaginary cases in order to make 
the principles more clear to the reader. If only the 
proper proportion of persons between the ages of 
twenty and thirty-five went from us in an emigra- 
tion numbering 200,000, the proportion would be 
50,000. But actually 56,000 go in addition to these. 
It is a clear loss of 56,000 persons in the prime of life, 
and it leaves 56,000 not in that prime, instead of this 
army of strength which it takes away. It is equal 
to a diminished force of 56,000, and the proportion 
of that number which, at the rate of 25 per cent., 
would make up for an increase of 56,000 to the less 
effective classes. We may, however, look at the 
matter in another way. 

The number of persons in the United Kingdom, 
between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, is 
about 7,000,000, leaving 21,000,000 as either under 
the one or over the other of these ages. How does one 
year's emigration affect this proportion ? It takes 
106,000 from the 7,000,000, and only 94,000 from the 
21,000,000. It leaves 6,894,000 against 20,906,000, 
instead of 7,000,000 against 21,000,000. In the case 
of 7,000,000 against 21,000,000, the difference on the 
side of weakness is 14,000,000; but in the case of 
6,894,000 against 20,906,000, the difference is 12,000 
more. Hence the emigration of 200,000 takes this 
12,000 from the scale in the weight of this nation, 
and adds it to the scale of those nations to which 
the emigrants go. 



124 



Social Politics. 



This is seen much more forcibly when yon take 
the process as it goes on year after year. It is 
12,000 next year as well as this, as it has been for 
years gone by, constantly increasing the proportion 
of the very young or of the old, and it must tell 
with increased effect as years go on. It is because 
of this progressive character of the effect thus 
produced by emigration that Ireland has decreased 
to so large an extent in its birth rate, for want of 
marriageable men and women among its population. 
It has told there with extreme power, and it is 
going on to the point at which it is telling on 
Scotland, as last census proves, and will tell also on 
England. 

There are some features of our social struggle that 
illustrate this point, and that are themselves of great 
importance. One of these is the anxiety of working 
men to " limit the number of apprentices." Nothing 
that men ever dreamed of is more truly unjust than 
this. To say to a young lad who has been born on 
God's earth, and can have no crime charged against 
him, " You shall not learn to handle a hammer, or a 
.saw, or a type " — is about as vile a tyranny against 
that lad as man can be guilty of against his fellow. 
No man worthy of his humanity can put himself in 
that lad's place without feeling that it is so. If 
masons, and joiners, and printers may prohibit such 
a lad from acquiring their crafts, so may all other 
workmen, and so may they forbid their fellows to 
live. The thing is simply infamous. But it is of 



Diminishing Force, 



125 



no use merely to denounce a social wrong without 
pointing out its real cause. When men are drafted 
off from a nation, and boys are left, then the boys- 
become numerous in excess. They crowd in on all 
the openings that occur in extreme numbers. Em- 
ployers soon find that by selecting from among these 
lads they can have work done at a rate at which 
grown men cannot do it. The men are enraged at 
the boys, and are driven to the tyranny to which we 
have referred, like a starving crew who are prepared 
to eat one another in their last extremity. Such 
tyranny would be impossible in a community where 
men were plentiful and boys scarce. In such a 
state of things men are proud of every lad, like 
noble well-to-do fathers of their sons, and would as 
soon put their feet into the fire as forbid the youths 
rising to the noblest positions they can attain. But 
it is otherwise where men are few and their poverty 
keen, while boys are in superabundance. Then, 
alas ! all the lowest and meanest elements of 
humanity are seen in the effort to drive off our 
rising youthful men ! 

Here is another feature. What a cry for " training 
ships" in which to stow away our superabundant 
youth ! Why have we so many more boys than can 
be disposed of in the useful trades, that we must 
organize methods of such an expensive class as this ? 
Because we are scarce of grown men. The effort to 
provide the nation with men in this way is vain. 
After spending vast sums on such work, the issue is 



126 



Social Politics. 



worthless. It is not the interest of those who are 
paid for the training to see this, but it is the interest 
of society. If we train ever so many boys, we shall 
not find that our able-bodied seamen increase. So 
soon as they become able-bodied they find it their 
best course to leave us for a more favoured nation. 
It is thus that 56,000 a year above the proper 
proportion of people in the prime of life leave us, 
and it is not conceivable that they can go without 
constantly leaving an extreme proportion of youths 
behind. 

Then there is another feature — that of our refor- 
matories and ragged schools of all grades. What is 
it which calls for these ? Our troops of boys and 
girls for whom no one has any use. You see them 
in floods where they are not wanted, and policemen 
hunting* them off as it were, out of the world ! Like 
so many wild pigeons that are treated as pests by 
the farmers, so are our own flesh and blood at the 
most interesting of all ages driven away, and would 
be shot if our little remaining humanity would allow. 
" Go about your business," roars the gruff man who 
abhors the boys, little thinking that they have no 
business about which to go ! They are there in 
everybody's way, because in proportion to the men 
who could manage them, and the profitable labour 
which would absorb them, they are redundant. 

It is beyond all dispute that this increases the 
burdens left behind by emigration in proportion to 
the backs left to carry them. In the course of years 



Diminishing Force. 



127 



it will disable effectually the old country, while it 
increases in the same proportion the competing 
power of the new. At last census it was found that 
women had increased in the Scottish population 
6' 5 5 per cent., and men only 5*41 per cent. But 
the census of 1871 will probably show a very much 
greater disparity, inasmuch as the causes have been 
active on a larger scale, and all the effects will be 
correspondingly large. Our young men have been 
passing to America and Canada in vast numbers 
during late years, and this will show itself in the 
returns. Every one who has given the least atten- 
tion to the subject knows that men in our colonies 
are greatly more numerous than women, and this is 
just because so great a number of the latter, and 
that of the most helpless, are left at home. Hence 
the untold miseries which so many of our sisters 
have to endure. 

The march of pauperism comes next in order. Xo 
paupers emigrate. Since 1845 this class has in- 
creased 27 per cent. In Edinburgh, every tenth 
person is a pauper. It is assumed that the popula- 
tion has increased 17 per cent. ; but Ireland has 
diminished. Scotland increased 6 per cent, during 
last decade, and will probably be found to have 
diminished during this one, while England is now 
having its exodus in turn. The " increase of popu- 
lation " is a favourite subterfuge with shallow poli- 
ticians who wish to make it appear that our evils 
are not increasing. What do our census authorities 



128 



Social Politics. 



say ? Calculating on the birth rate and death rate, 
they say — " The actual and natural decennial in- 
crease in Scotland, between the taking of the census 
in 1851 and 1861 would therefore amount to 
405,185 persons, and that number added to the 
population ascertained to be in Scotland in 1851 
would have caused the population in 1861 to have 
amounted to 3,293,927 persons ; and the decennial 
rate of increase would have been 14*02 per cent.,, 
or greatly more than double what it proved to be." 
Yet it is not so much in its proportion to the mass, 
as to the working class that it is important to view 
pauperism. We must take the sum of poor rate 
and divide it among the productive men, in order 
to see the real pressure of the burden which it 
entails. The annual legal cost of the poor in Scot- 
land is now about £800,000. If we take the rate as 
the same for England and Wales in proportion to 
the population, it is six times as much; that is, 
£4,800,000 — in both cases leaving out all voluntary 
support of the poor. In Ireland the alms must far 
exceed the rate, and we may safely take the actual 
drain on productive industry as proportionate to the 
population — that is, at £1,600,000. This gives us 
altogether for the nation the sum of £7,200,000 as 
representative of the share of produce consumed by 
the helpless poverty of the people. There are 
two workhouses connected with Edinburgh the 
buildings of which alone will cost £100,000. Years 
of work by hundreds of workmen have gone to rear 



Diminishing Force. 



129 



these houses. This is all labour expended without 
one stone being laid upon another for the benefit of 
the producing classes themselves, and that while 
their numbers in relation to the consuming multi- 
tude are constantly being diminished. 

But the same thing is seen when we look at the 
criminal class in society. That is not diminished 
by emigration. We are shut up from transportation, 
and hence have a vastly increased force of police 
and prison officers to maintain, because of a con- 
stantly increasing criminal class in the community. 
Our present Home Secretary is fond of stating that 
crime has not increased during the time within 
which the population has very largely done so. In 
the face of this statement it becomes a very curious 
fact that an enormous addition is being made to the 
accommodation for prisoners. At Perth such an en- 
largement is now going on, and that only because 
smaller prisons are overcrowded and cannot get 
their long sentenced inmates sent on. A highly 
capable governor of one of our jails assures us that 
prisoners have increased 33J per cent, during less 
than the time during which Mr. Bruce says they 
have not increased at all. Emigration is not taking 
one from us. It is only taking our well behaved 
and capable workmen. By this the effective men 
are diminished in number, and their burdens in- 
creased. In the nature of things every mouth must 
be filled and every back covered by producing 
hands ; and though money is given for the produce, 

K 



130 



Social Politics. 



those who get it are none the richer when it is 
handed back for worse than nothing. Is it any 
matter for wonder if the working men who do this, 
while their ranks are being thinned by the emigra- 
tion of those who joined in aiding them, should find 
it more and more difficult to live ? 

It may not be out of place here to notice that 
there is a burden of no small magnitude left behind 
amono- the working men in their own state of mind 
on social matters. Many of them actually think the 
less they work the better ! And. they insist that 
no man shall do more than a very limited amount of 
work if they can prevent him ! They insist that no 
one shall learn to work beyond a very limited 
number ! They and their children are actually 
dying in hundreds for want of houses to live in, and 
yet they think that the fewer houses they build the 
better ! They are miserably clad, and yet they 
think the fewer clothes they make the better ! 
They are in semi-starvation because of high prices, 
and yet they actually think that the higher they 
can make the cost of production, the better for them ! 
They do not see that no power on earth can make 
houses plentiful but those who build them. Nor do 
they see that short hours and little done during 
them must issue in everything being scarce and 
dear — not beyond the reach of those who get the 
money for nothing, but assuredly beyond the reach 
of those who give half their money- wages away for 
worse than nothing. This is not to be altogether 



Diminishing Force. 



131 



separated from the effects of emigration. Our most 
intelligent and independent minds leave us. The 
spirit of those who remain suffers through this de- 
parture of the nobler element. The competition, too, 
of those who have left us, narrowing as it does the 
demand for our products, has its effect ; and so our 
force in proportion to our numbers is sadly 
diminished. A landlord in Edinburgh told a 
friend of ours that he had a room in one of his 
houses which he let at 2s. 6d. a week. He thought 
it was large for the money, so he put a partition 
through it, halving the window at one end and the 
fireplace at the other. He then let each of the 
halves at 2s. 6d. a week ! He had no difficulty in 
doing so. Houses at £10 yearly rent are now 
standing empty in considerable numbers, but at 
2s. 6d. a week the smallest den is "run upon." 
Emigration will never thin the ranks of the poor. 
On the contrary, as going on with us, it will in- 
crease their multitude. 



132 



CHAPTER XXIX. 
LESSENING PEODUCTION. 

Theee are few things of greater importance to 
society at present than the political ideas of working 
men. Household suffrage has placed the choice of 
the nation's rulers in the hands of the sons of toil, 
and ere long they will choose those who are prepared 
to rule according to the political economy in vogue 
among the working classes. Every one, therefore, 
who cares for his country's weal must care for the 
enlightenment of those who will, ere long, be found 
wielding a power so momentous as that of deter- 
mining what both the legislature and executive 
shall do. 

If, then, we may draw our conclusions from some 
of the best sources of evidence, it is clear that the 
political notions prevailing among working men aro 
sadly astray. One of the most prevalent of these 
notions is, that the prosperity of trade and of labour 
hangs upon the limitation of production. In an 
article we noticed lately in one of our most popular 
papers, a writer ascribes the present dull condition 
of the linen trade to over-production. His aim m 
to show that manufacturers have such an excessive 
armoury of plant in readiness, and their hands are 
so numerous, that whenever the least increase in 



Lessening Production. 



133 



demand raises prices a shade, more than sufficient 
goods are produced to overstock markets and bring 
prices down. He actually implores the working 
men to set their hearts on shortening hours and 
lessening production if they would see prosperity 
.again ! He says — " Unless a general and permanent 
reduction of the hours of labour takes place, 
whereby mills and factories, and all other such 
places, will be reduced from sixty to fifty hours 
per week, we may look in vain for several years 
to come for any real and lasting improvement in 
the Fife linen trade." He is here only echoing an 
idea which seems to rule our trades' unions all over 
the world. Working men actually band themselves 
together to secure a limitation of produce ! Yet 
these are the men by whose votes and influence the 
country must now be governed. Power is passing 
from those who have drawn as much as possible of 
the produce out of the hands of producers into those 
of non-producers; and that power is passing, or 
rather has passed, to those who think that the less 
produced the better. In other words, the working- 
classes have hitherto been beggared by those who 
had power over them ; and now, without attempt- 
ing to stop the dreadful robbery, which more than 
accounts for all their embarrassment, they mean, by 
the additional evil of enforced idleness, to ruin 
themselves ! 

Let us see that Ave neither misrepresent nor 
exaggerate the case as it stands. It will not be 



134 



Social Politics, 



easy to dispute the maxim that he who makes two 
stalks of com to grow where, but for him, one only 
would have grown, is a benefactor to his kind. The 
maxim applies to every other thing as well as to 
corn — that is, to everything which goes to sustain 
life and increase the happiness of human beings. 
He who causes two pairs of shoes to be made where 
one pair only would have been made but for him is 
in the same category with the grower of the two 
stalks of corn. So is he who causes two yards of 
cloth to be woven where one would only have been 
so but for him. So with all others who do this in 
any matter required by man. But our limiting 
friends argue as if the opposite were true, and as if 
he who makes only one shoe when he might make 
two were deserving praise, while he who makes the 
tw o merits the censure of his fellows ! He who 
works on Monday, and turns out the greatest number 
of good and durable articles, is not to be placed on 
the same high level as he occupies who idles both 
Mondays and Tuesdays, and turns out the fewest I 
Beyond all question, the latter limits production and 
saves the market from being overstocked ! Perhaps 
we should not wonder that it gratifies a lazy fellow 
to find himself praised for his very laziness, and yet 
it is astonishing that men, as a class, can be so 
gratified. There, for instance, is a lot of loungers at 
the busy crossing of two streets, with their hands in 
their pockets, and a preacher of political economy 
goes up to them and commences with — " Well done, 



Lessening Production. 



135 



good and faithful men; ye are the benefactors of 
human kind. Yours is the true way to enrich 
your families and friends." Is it not wonderful 
if they accept the praise and fail to see the sarcasm I 
And yet, one way or other, they constantly do so. 

Well, what are the facts % How many shoe- 
makers' wives and children are absolutely without 
shoes ? How many tailors' sons are without coats ? 
How many spinners' wives and children are without 
proper clothing 1 How many masons' and joiners' 
families are without fit houses to put their heads 
into ? What an amount of privation is everywhere 
suffered because of the scarcity of those things that 
are produced by working men ! And yet they 
imagine that somehow it will mend matters to pro- 
duce fewer of these things than are now produced ! 
The idea is that, because the more scarce any article 
is in the country the higher its money value, some- 
how dearth is a benefit to the working man ! But 
in what possible way can the raising of the price of 
these things which working men need bring such 
things in greater abundance to them ? Money can 
neither be eaten nor worn, and if necessaries are 
high, high wages can bring them in no greater mea- 
sure. Though things are scarce, and consequently 
dear, the richer classes get them easily (because it 
makes only a slight difference to a man with a large 
income whether such things are high priced or low) ; 
but they are placed effectually beyond the reach 
of all the poorer classes. Take the article of shoes 



136 



Social Politics. 



as an illustration. So many thousands have no 
shoes at all ; so many have only the cast-off shoes of 
other persons ; so many have only an inferior sort of 
shoes though new ; only a small number (as trade 
now stands) have shoes thoroughly suited to health 
and comfort. Well, make shoes scarcer and dearer 
than they are now, what is the immediate and 
necessary effect ? The numbers who have none are 
increased, as certainly as two and two are four. The 
numbers who must wear second-hand shoes are also 
increased. So are those who must wear an inferior 
article. Those who have superior shoes or boots 
are lessened in number. There is no law in nature 
more irresistible than this. Well, the shoemakers 
think that making shoes scarce will bring more 
money to them ! But all other men, they must 
remember, are as free to act on this principle as 
are the shoemakers. 

Say we take the spinners, weavers, and tailors, so 
as to have the clothing affected in a similar way to 
the shoes. So many thousands are now clad in dirty 
rags that should long since have been consigned to 
the papermakers, if not to the flames ; so many more 
are clad in cast-off clothing ; so many in coarse, un- 
comfortable stuff; a few only are clad in comfort. 
You make clothing scarcer and dearer. The ragged 
inevitably increase in number, and the rags are 
longer worn, and so more filthy ; so are the whole of 
the various classes affected, as in the case of the 
shoes. Inevitably the number of shirtless shoe- 



Lesee n ing Production. 



137 



makers is multiplied. Thus the miseiy spreads. 
Yet he who spreads it by restricting labour is 
regarded as a worthy man of his class ! 

How are we to account for this infatuation ? It 
seems nothing short of infatuation. That the very 
men who are without the necessaries of a comfortable 
life should conspire to make all these necessaries 
more scarce can hardly be called anything else. 
And yet it is the result of leaving out of their 
account a few of the most obvious of political veri- 
ties. For example, there is such a thing as the 
world's market. That is constituted by the mutual 
relation of all the markets in the world, in so far as 
they are accessible to mankind in their great collec- 
tive capacity. When men insist on having liberty 
to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, 
they merely demand access to the world's great mart 
itself. The mercantile value of goods of any kind 
is not what they will bring in any particular place, 
but what they will bring when sold where, after 
deducting cost of transit, they will bring the 
highest price. The ingenuity of merchants is equal 
to the work of bringing goods into this market. 
They so manage as to cause that competition which 
speedily fixes the real value of all that is produced 
by man. In one place goods may be made so scarce 
that they will bring, for a little time, more than 
their real value; but very soon similar goods are 
brought from elsewhere to that place, and the true 
price is established. So goods in one place may be 



138 



Social Politics. 



in greater abundance than is at all required, and the 
price may be lowered too far; but they are soon 
transferred to where they are scarce, and the true 
value is again secured. Produce is yet so far below 
the wants of men — in other words, there are yet so 
many starving and ill-clad, ill-housed thousands in the 
world — that " over-production " is ridiculous. The 
demand is irresistible. Hence, even in defiance of 
artificial restrictions, such as tariff laws, the highest 
value in the world's market is maintained. 

A glance at our export trade may profit us. here. 
We may look at it in the light of the last returns 
issued by the Board of Trade. The total value 
of all British and Irish produce exported during 
the year ending on the 31st December, 1869, was 
£190,045,230. What does this value really mean? 
It is the utmost which the mercantile skill of the 
empire can bring in return for the goods of various 
kinds when these are ready to be carried off and 
sold in the world's wide market. It is no arbitrarily 
fixed sum for which these goods may be sold, but 
merely the highest sum they will bring, exclusive 
of the cost of transit and profit of merchants. If 
you keep back any portion of the produce ready to 
be sent out, you have just so much less money 
returned, or so much less of other goods imported. 
It is not in the power of any conceivable combina- 
tion to alter the laws which regulate the real value 
of produce. You may increase the nominal sum 
received for certain goods within a limited circle, 



Lessening Production. 



139 



but even in doing this you only lower the value of 
money there and in relation to these goods. Let us, 
then, suppose that the linen trades of the kingdom 
should combine and lessen production, and that all 
other trades combine too, so that the sum of produce 
available for export shall be lessened by twenty-five 
per cent. What would the result be ? Even if such 
a widespread change could be effected in the world 
that the same money could be secured for a fourth 
less produce, that would only lower the value of 
money by a fourth. But the same money would 
not be received. There is such a competition with 
us in the world's markets now as would prevent 
the price of our goods from being sensibly raised. 
We should have only £142,533,923 instead of 
£190,045,230 as the return for our exported pro- 
duce ; that is, we should in a year, in this one matter, 
be £47,511,307 poorer by the limitation of our pro- 
duce. We should be twenty-five per cent, poorer 
in every imported comfort; that is, for every four 
articles we now enjoy we should have only three. 
The rich would not have much less on account of 
the dearth ; but what would be the portion of the 
struggling poor ? And yet this is solemnly pub- 
lished as the true way in which to benefit the 
working man ! 

If we look directly at our imports we may have 
yet a stronger view of this matter. In the return 
before us we have these for eleven months only, but 
they are so far uniform as to be easily calculable for 



140 



Social Politics. 



the year. They will reach £237,070,724 in 1869. 
If we take them at this sum, and deduct the exports, 
we leave £47,024,694 ; that is, we have introduced 
to our ports to that amount beyond what we have 
sent away. This £47,024,694 represents both the 
freight of goods and the profit of merchants engaged 
in our foreign trade. But it constitutes no part of 
the price of our exports. The producer receives no 
benefit from it. So far as it does not mean debt 
due to foreign countries it means only the advantage 
of our traders, not of our producers, who create 
our "British and Irish produce." These have sent 
out to the value of £190,045,230, and this they re- 
ceive ; but they must pay in money £47,024,694 
over and above if they are to consume the sum of 
our imports. 

Now, let us suppose that working men, in their 
combined strength, were to restrain production to 
the extent in which the restriction would lessen our 
exports by one-fourth of their value. They would 
accomplish this by a very slight restriction on pro- 
duce as a whole ; and yet they would be some forty- 
seven millions sterling poorer, and that much less 
able to buy our imports. Traders in such a case 
would suffer no doubt; but what would be the conse- 
quences to the mass of the people ? Nothing is 
more sure than that if exports are not forthcoming, 
neither will imports. Foreign countries will not 
send goods to us except in return for goods sent out 
by us. Hence the issue of that which we here 



Lessening Production. 



141 



suppose would be severe. There would be a priva- 
tion among the masses of which we have little 
conception now. The price of everything would no 
doubt rise just as prices always do in famine ; but 
this is only because money gets less in value as 
money's worth becomes hard to obtain. 

Let us here look for a little to another view of 
the subject. Suppose the working classes combine 
and suppress the liquor and tobacco traffic. They 
thus, by one stroke, retain £154,000,000 a year 
which passes from them for worse than nothing. 
This vast sum becomes at once available for the 
purchase of goods such as now cannot be bought or 
worn for lack of purchasing power among the 
masses. Some working men try to console us, in 
view of the terrible expenditure on liquor and 
tobacco, by saying that "the money does not go 
out of the country." They console themselves with 
that which is not true. It does go out of the 
country, and can only be brought back by our 
exported produce. But, out of the country or in it, 
it is out of the pockets of the toiling millions, and 
hence all those trades that depend on their ex- 
penditure, except those in liquor and tobacco, are 
languishing. Remove these trades, and you have at 
once three millions a week to spend on home and 
foreign produce such as sustains and comforts the 
masses of the people. Is not this a more sensible 
way of bettering their condition than that of com- 
bining to make all things scarce and dear? 



142 



Social Politics. 



There is a most serious fact in the returns of trade 
between this country and the United States this 
last year of 1869. As we already pointed out in 
another part of this treatise, we had, in 1868, above 
£8,000,000 as a balance in cash from the American 
Union, besides a large balance in useful pro- 
duce chiefly. This year the figures are wonder- 
fully altered. The balance in our favour is only 
£1,866,716 ! This is not because we have sent 
fewer goods to America ; for we have sent upwards 
of three millions sterling in value more than we sent 
last year. We should therefore have had to that 
extent more money from them, had there been no 
other disturbing cause. It is not because we have 
received more cotton, for we have received, in value, 
some four millions sterling less than in 1868. We 
have received a large increase in grain — as much as 
three millions in value more of that useful article 
than during last year ; but that does not account for 
so unfavourable a balance in coin. Have we not 
an indication here of a drawback that will soon tell 
far more terribly on this country than it has ever 
yet done ? Capital owned in this country is seeking 
investment in America. Our capitalists are lending 
largely to the United States, and enabling workmen 
to do that in the country to which they have emi- 
grated which was wont to be done in this countrv. 
If labour in this land keeps the incubus of which 
we have spoken still hanging on its neck, it is 
perfectly certain that it will not be able to compete 



Lessening Production. 



143 



with younger nations in their ports; and accumulated 
wealth, as capital is, really will find its way out of 
the country. Keep up an expenditure of one 
hundred and fifty millions a year — at the same time 
lessen production — and it will follow, with unerring 
sureness, that we shall be left dying of starvation 
in the rear of other peoples. The ruin of a nation 
is not a result which shows itself all at once. It is 
the issue generally of a comparatively slow process ; 
but it is not the less surely, because it is slowly, that 
a people who send off their most industrious work- 
men to increase the forces of other nations who are 
already competing with them for the world's trade, 
do come to ruin by such a course. It should not be 
forgotten that just the more favourable the con- 
ditions of labour are in the countries to which we 
send out our workmen, just so much the sooner will 
our adversity come to us from their competition. 
Prosperity can come only by keeping our strength 
as high and our production as full as can be 
reasonably secured. 



144 



CHAPTER XXX. 
" CHEAPENING LABOUR." 

There is one feature of the result of clearing men 
off the land which is closely connected with forced 
emigration, and supremely worthy of study by 
those who care for their country's future. It was 
brought under public notice lately in an able 
pamphlet by Councillor Dugald Campbell of 
Greenock. The facts stated by this gentleman are 
of the most startling and terrible character, in 
relation to the dreadful overcrowding of the town 
in which he resides. Mr. Campbell sees all the 
evil in the reduction of wages, caused by the influx 
of Irishmen and Highlandmen into Greenock, and 
speaks of "the eviction of Irish tenantry" and 
" evictions in the Highlands " as the great causes 
to which this influx is to be ascribed. His minds 
eye is filled, to the exclusion of all beyond, with this 
reduction in the wages of the labourer, because of 
this influx of the Celtic race " throwing a large 
surplus of unskilled labour into the market, reducing 
its price," and bringing the whole labouring class 
to the verge of beggary, so near that a few days of 
idleness from the severity of the weather throws 
on charity. We must look at more than one per- 
plexing point when such ideas as those of this 



Cheapening Labour." 



145 



worthy councillor are put before us. Here, for 
example, we are told that an increase of willing 
workmen issues in poverty to the whole mass of the 
labouring population of a stirring, thriving seaport ! 
Here is yet another strange thing — a cheapening of 
that labour on which the sustenance of the whole 
people depends brings the mass of that people to 
the borders of ruin ! Does this accord with natural 
law? Mr. Campbell, along with multitudes, evi- 
dently thinks that it is in the nature of things that 
an influx of labour, such as makes it more easily 
purchased, is a bad thing, at least for the labouring 
population. He deprecates the influx and the 
cheapening. 

Let us see whether this is the result of looking at 
the case in its proper light. Suppose we take as our 
illustration a coal-field within easy reach of Greenock 
as a place of export. A mine has been opened in 
that field, we shall say, and a few miners are at 
work, so that a few tons of coal are coming weekly 
to the surface. A few horses and carters are eno-aged 
in carting these coals to Greenock, and some small 
vessels, manned by a few sailors, are engaged in con- 
veying these coals to Ireland, and to the Highlands 
and Islands of Scotland. In this state of things a 
very great deal is necessarily expended in getting a 
very few coals brought to their ultimate destination. 
The miners are lowland Scotchmen, and require, we 
shall say, twice as much to sustain them as Celtic 
workmen do. It is the same with all the other men 

L 



146 



Social Politics. 



employed, and so also with the horses. The conse- 
quence of this is, that where the coals are wanted 
they are very scarce and very dear. The rich may 
have them, but even the moderately poor can have 
none. So far as coals are concerned, the poor are 
poor indeed when this is the way. We are here 
only describing an actual state of things. 

But now let us suppose that somehow a lot of 
Celtic labourers come over to the coal-work, and 
some Irishmen bring over some of their hardy, active 
horses with them. Even Irish and Highland sailors 
offer themselves. Both men and horses can live on 
half, or less than half, of that required to sustain the 
lowland races. They can easily do as much work 
with half the expenditure. Here is a dreadful cala- 
mity, according to popular ideas; and we must admit 
it may not he just at first favourable to the lowland 
workmen or their cattle. If these have got luxuri- 
ous and lazy, they may find that a class of men and 
horses, who are neither the one nor the other, distance 
them in the race of life. But something like double 
the coal will find its way to " the far end," and it 
may be that not far above half the price per ton will 
suffice to buy it. Let this process go on, and ten 
times the coal will find its way where it is wanted. 
This will make a very different state of things pre- 
vail there, at least so far as fuel is concerned. If in 
any way it presses upon some of the people on this 
side of the water, it surely cannot also beggar those 
on the other side. If you lay down two tons of 



" Cheapening Labour." 



147 



coal at a man's door for what was before the price 
of one, he will be a strange man who will think you 
mean to bring him "upon the parish!" For one 
man on this side who has his wages reduced by this 
process, there will be twenty on the other side 
whose condition in life is benefited. And if it should 
be hard to persuade the one of this truth, it need not 
be so hard to convince the twenty. But such is the 
natural and necessary effect of " surplus labour," as 
it is called, and the reduction of wages. It is inevi- 
tably, so far as it goes, the increase of produce, and 
the lessening of expenditure in its production: it is, 
in other words, inevitably, so far as it goes, the 
en riching of the community as a whole. You may 
as well try to prove that a square is a circle, as to 
gainsay this certain truth. Increase expenditure 
and lessen production, and you will be poorer with 
a certainty that belongs to the most sure of all assur- 
ances. Lessen expenditure and increase production, 
and riches will increase more surely, if possible, than 
the sun will rise and set to-morrow, or the tide ebb 
and flow. How perfect, then, must be the delusion 
which ascribes to " surplus labour " and a reduction 
of the cost of production, the pauperism of the 
masses ! 

But our illustration is not complete. Coals are 
not sent to Ireland and our Highlands and Islands 
merely that the Irish and the Highlanders may have 
good fires. Neither are they sent that money may 
be brought over in return. Our Celtic brethren are 



148 



Social Politics. 



not in the position to give us gold to any great ex- 
tent. But they are in a much more noble position 
than if they were able to send us ever so much of 
the "precious metals." They are able to live on so 
little, and to produce so much more than they de- 
vour, that they can send us enormous quantities of 
both food and clothing, and these, too, of a quality 
of the highest character. The coal we send from 
our mines is exchanged for grain and food, as well 
as clothing, of the richest quality. The more plenti- 
ful we can make their fuel, the more labour they 
can give to the soil and the loom, and the more pro- 
duce they can and do send us. Now, stop a little, 
working man. We know you are bursting to tell us 
something here; but we know it already, and will 
soon tell you it, as some would say, "in the deafest 
side of your head/' Just wait a little. Mind, what 
we say is true. The more coal you send to Ireland 
and the Highlands, the more butter, and ham, and 
eggs, do the Irish and the Highlanders send over 
here. The cheaper labour is in Greenock, the 
cheaper coal is in Dublin and elsewhere, and the 
cheaper, and more plentiful too, will grain and all 
else that depends on Irish soil and Irish labour be 
on this side the channel. This is surely a strange 
way of increasing pauperism. The expense of pro- 
duction is made low, the amount of produce is made 
high, and the result is starvation and beggary! 
Surely there must be something far wrong here. 
It is extremely difficult to make the labouring r 



" Cheapening Labour!' 



149 



man understand this, hence we need to dwell on the 
point a little. Take, then, a Highland farmer — say 
at present he can have no coal — that useful mineral 
is beyond his reach in price. He and his family 
must dig their fuel from the bog far up the moun- 
tain side. The time and strength given to this is 
deducted from such labour as would greatly increase 
his grain crops and also his flocks on the hill. A 
change comes, in which he soon finds out that it is 
greatly better to give labour to corn and mutton, and 
exchange these for coal; and he soon sends a goodly 
quantity of these across to bring him the desired 
fuel. Just as coal is cheapened to him, so is his pro- 
duce cheapened to the miners by this process. Their 
benefit is as sure as his. Yet a process which has 
brought this about in a high degree is given as the 
reason why so many affected by it are reduced to 
helpless poverty! What is the true explanation? 

Now for it, poor toiling reader. We shall tax 
your patience no longer. You want to ask us how 
it is that the poor colliers do not get the grain, 
mutton, ham, and eggs, as they used to do. Coal 
is more abundant, and food and clothing are more 
abundant too, as the result of lowered wages; but 
the abundance goes hand in hand with an increase 
of misery and destitution among the labouring 
millions. They do not profit by the very abundance 
which they produce. Why? Surely it would be 
monstrous to answer that it is because of that 
abundance, and the lowness of expenditure in pro- 



150 



Social Politics. 



ducing it. We need no such absurd explanation. 
One sufficiently flagrant and dreadful is at hand. 

Now, mark, kind reader, what we say. It is not 
intemperance that accounts for the horrid anomaly 
of cheap and abounding labour increasing pauperism. 
Mr, Campbell does not spare intemperance. He is, 
every bit of him, a manly man, and spares nothing 
so far as he sees anything in his way. But he has 
missed the mark, notwithstanding, and has left the 
main thing out of account. Let us illustrate what 
we mean. Suppose, instead of whisky and tobacco 
being sold as they are now, that oatmeal were dealt 
with in the same fashion, and that the people used 
oatmeal to about the same extent as they use these 
narcotics. What would be the difference as to 
pauperism? That which now costs two-thirds of a 
penny in oatmeal would cost a shilling — that is 
really about the proportion of value to price in the 
case of whisky and tobacco, putting the two together, 
— two-thirds of a pennyworth are sold for a shilling 
to the labouring man. Well, let it be so, not with 
these articles, but with oatmeal, and let about the 
same money be spent on oatmeal at that rate as is 
spent on whisky and tobacco now. There would 
be a difference; but what would be the effect as 
regards the comfort of the labouring masses, and 
their liability to pauperism? The use of oatmeal 
would not cause a loss of work, and consequently 
of wages, to the extent of seven shillings and 
sixpence a week, as is the case with liquor, nor 



" Cheapening Labour!' 151 

would it cause the sluggishness and consequent 
slackness of effort now caused by tobacco. Let 
these drawbacks, therefore, be carefully weighed, 
and placed to their proper account. They, no 
doubt, aggravate the evil before us, and let them 
have all the discredit which is their due. Oatmeal 
could have no such discredit. As we suppose the 
matter, it would only be the payment of a shilling 
for two-thirds of a pennyworth of the meal. That 
is, for every pennyworth of oatmeal purchased, the 
labourer would pay one shilling and fivepence for 
nothing ! This is what they actually do for whisky 
and tobacco, and we are supposing that they should 
do the same thing for oatmeal. What would be the 
effect? 

The amount of actual money paid over the counter 
at present for whisky, together with other liquors, and 
tobacco is above five pounds sterling to every soul 
in the country — it is considerably above this sum. 
Then, we take this as paid for oatmeal at the rate 
of a pennyworth for eighteenpence — that is, eighteen 
shillings for one shillings worth — that is, eighteen 
pounds for twenty shilling's worth — that is, out of 
a single family of five persons, more than twenty 
pounds for about twenty-one shillings worth of 
oatmeal ! What would be the effect on the con- 
dition of the families purchasing their oatmeal at 
this rate ? Even if the heads of those families had 
what are called good wa^es, how much of Irish and 
Highland produce would fall to their lot? To 



152 



Social Politics. 



whom would the butter, eggs, and ham of Ireland 
go ? On whose backs would Irish linen be worn ? 
For whom would the sheep and oxen of the Highland 
farms be sent over ? Would it be for them, or for 
those to whom they paid their twenty pounds for 
twenty-one shilling's worth of oatmeal ? Does it 
require a master intellect to say to whom the pro- 
duce sent over in exchange for the fruits of their 
industry would go ? How could it go to the men 
and their families from whom the money repre- 
senting these fruits was swindled at the rate under 
consideration ? Beyond all question the ham and 
egg, the butter and loaf, the salmon, and even the 
choice of the herrings, with linen and wool of the 
finest quality, would go to those who could sell a 
pennyworth of oatmeal for eighteenpence. The poor 
fools who gave them the money, with their wives 
and children, would have to shift with the refuse, 
or die. 

Now, mark us well. We are keeping out of sight 
the enormous drawback of drinking and smoking in 
their effect on the productiveness of labour. That 
effect is very great, and aggravates the evil to 
which Mr. Campbell so graphically draws attention ; 
but it is small compared with the actual money 
swindle. Consequently, who does not know to 
whose use the return produce of Ireland and the 
Highlands is now devoted ? There is not a man, 
woman, or child, directly or indirectly, fed and 
clothed from the proceeds of this shameless affair 



"Cheapening Labour? 



153 



who has not enough and to waste of that very pr< >- 
duce; while the families by whom it is won, who 
produce that which is exchanged for it, are on the 
borders of starvation, and actually dying by scores 
for want of wholesome food, clothing, and homes. 
Mr. Campbell says, " On coming across, often "with 
large families, the Irish poor are compelled to seek 
homes at the lowest rents ; and it is no uncommon 
thing to find eight or nine individuals occupying 
apartments suitable at most for two or three, and 
this in the worst localities, amidst a dissipated and 
degraded population, whose vices they rapidly 
imitate and he gives an instance of twenty-seven 
families, consisting of about 140 individuals, crowded 
into a space of 40 feet by 110 in a property under 
his own care. He tells us that it would be possible 
to carry out the Public Health Act in Greenock 
only by turning "thousands to the streets." But 
how can it be otherwise so long as these thousands 
are giving aw^ay their wages at the rate of eigh teen- 
pence for a pennyworth ? How can they pay rents 
or anything else in an adequate way ? 

We received lately an explanation of a very 
curious matter from one of our Ayrshire harbour 
masters. The matter was this. A great number of 
children are seen passing to this harbour before 
dinner time, carrying their parents' dinners for them. 
These children are seen begging from every avail- 
able house and person on their way back. Their 
fathers are workmen of the hardiest and most 



154 



Social Politics. 



efficient character, engaged in stowing the coals 
into the vessels in the harbours, a duty which no 
Scotchman can face. They have large wages, but 
then they give so many eighteenpences for single 
pennyworths, that while Government draws a large 
revenue, and liquor and tobacco dealers grow 
wealthy on them, their homes are execrable, and 
their ragged, almost naked, wives and children are 
beggars. It is too much for human forbearance to 
witness such monstrous cupidity in the name of 
the Queen, and by the hands of men who eat and 
drink themselves to death at the expense of these 
ignorant and helpless wretches ! Mr. Campbell, like 
most others who write with half the courage and 
frankness that characterizes him, says : — " While 
other causes pauperize thousands, it (intemperance) 
demoralizes, pauperizes, and slays its tens of 
thousands;" but he does not seem to see that it 
is the swindle in money that is now associated 
with the liquor to which by far the largest share 
in the pauperism must be ascribed. Were it 
not for this, the aristocracy and middle classes 
of this country would not bear with the liquor 
traffic for six months. Were it not for the money, 
there is manhood enough in those classes to make 
them stamp out that horrid malady within that 
time. If it were not the money, at the rate we 
have stated, flowing to our upper classes through the 
liquor traffic, pauperism would be a trifle. Men 
might drink themselves dead on a few pence, and it 



" Cheapening Labour! 1 



155 



would come to little in the way of impoverishing 
their class. The labourers whose children beg on 
the way back from giving them their dinners could 
not hold as much liquor as would beggar them, if 
they drank all they could contain, were the liquor 
about a halfpenny a gill. But it is sevenpence, and 
hence they can drink all they win. This grand 
hypocrisy, perpetrated in the name of Government, 
and the restrictions of a traffic which can rob as it 
does now were its restrictions tenfold more stringent, 
must cease. It is fast strangling itself by the 
poverty and discontent it is creating ; but men must 
not wait, or these dangerous social elements that 
will kill the liquor trade by their growth will have 
done so only in the death of the nation. 



156 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

WHO IS TO BLAME? 

In our former chapters on the progress of social 
deterioration in Britain, we have said enough to 
.show the dreadful character of the process now 
going on. It is time we should draw more closely 
up to the question as to who are responsible for this 
process. And, first of all, we must look the true 
character of the evil fairly in the face. We must 
.settle the point, in accordance with truth, as to which 
end is the beginning and which the termination of 
that on which the process essentially depends. Is 
it that end at which we find the drunkard, or is 
it that at which we find the manufacturer of the 
liquor in the use of which men and women become 
drunkards ? Let us illustrate what we mean. 
There is a quantity of dead and dying fish lying on 
the bank of a river, and an angler standing by them. 
There has been a process here by which these fishes, 
that were a little while ago swimming in the river, 
are now dead and dying on the bank. Whether did 
this process begin with the fish or with the angler ? 
Remember we have the highest possible authority 
for the analogjr on which we take up this illustra- 
tion. Our Saviour said to those who were endea- 
vouring to make their living by getting fish from 



Who is to Blame ? 



157 



the Sea of Galilee, " Folloiv me, and I will make 
you fishers of men!' It is therefore clear that men 
can be caught just as fishes are. And when they 
are caught, and dead or dying on the bank, at which 
end did the matter begin ? Was it at that of the 
fishes, or at that of the angler ? No one needs to be 
told. Nor does any one need to be told at which 
end the matter begins in the case of alcoholic 
intemperance. Beyond all question it begins with 
the manufacturer of intoxicating liquor. It ends 
with the drunkard. 

But we say again, let us face the question fairly. 
Is it the same with men as with fishes ? Let us be 
careful not to take advantage of the enemy. How 
is a fish caught in angling ? By a mistake. It 
bites a dressed hook instead of a portion of good fish 
food. How is a man caught in intemperance ? By 
a mistake which is identical with that of the fish. 
He takes a drug which ruins, instead of a wholesome 
beverage. Perhaps you say that the cases are not 
identical, as there is intelligence in the man and not 
in the fish; but there is only a difference in that 
respect in degree, so that a bait must be somewhat 
more disguised in the one case than in the other. 
In the cases of a very great many human beings 
there is no more real knowledge of alcohol than 
there is of a baited hook on the part of a fish. The 
cases are much more similar than perhaps most men 
are ready to allow. 

Every one knows (who knows anything at all on 



158 



Social Politics. 



the subject) that if you have a river stocked with 
fish, and have bait suited to their taste, you have 
only to cast that bait with some degree of skill on 
the water, with hooks concealed, and you will catch 
a portion of the fish that are there. But it is 
exactly the same with the liquor traffic. You have 
only to open a liquor shop with suitable liquors, and 
a number of any people on earth will there become 
drunkards. See, look down from that grassy bank 
on a large pool in that lovely river, and see the finny 
creatures enjoying life — as surely as you or some 
one else shall cast the suitable fly-hook on the 
surface of the pool so surely will one of those fishes 
be caught. Then look on that lovely village — we 
could name the pool, and we could name the place 
if need be — that village is full of sober men, women, 
and children. At present all is well with them, and 
drunkenness is unknown. Open a shop for the sale 
of alcoholic drink there, and let that hook from hell 
be only baited skilfully — as sure as that publican 
opens his door and offers his liquor, so surely shall 
there be drunkards in that village, and that within 
a very few month's time. The steady man will have 
become the reeling sot — the thrifty woman the 
demented drunkard — and even children will have 
learned to drink. There will be delirium tremens, 
and deaths in which perdition will have begun in 
the living here, ere the soul has left the body. He 
is culpably a fool who thinks for a moment of 
gainsaying this truth; and he is no better who will 



Who is to Blame ? 



159 



talk about the " respectability " of the " houses " and 
of the " traders " who are to do this infernal angling 
among human souls. The greater that respectability 
only the better dressed are the hooks, and the 
greater numbers will be caught and destroyed. 

Let us look at these "fishermen," not of Galilee, 
but of Pandemonium. u In the three kingdoms/' we 
are informed on official authority, " there are about 
6,000 malsters, 38,000 licensed brewers of beer, 3,000 
dealers in beer, 85,000 publicans who retail beer 
with spirits, and 53,000 persons who retail beer 
alone." How many is that ? One hundred and 
eighty thousand people engaged in this deplorable 
traffic. But this gives a most inadequate view of 
the multitude ; for all the assistants in the traffic 
are left out. We have only the persons " licensed " 
to cany on, with all needed aid, this terrible business. 
These men pay £756,000 for "license" to ply 
their fS fisheries " ! This of itself is no mean sign 
of their importance and power to employ inferior 
hands. Such is a mere glance at our gigantic army 
of degradation ! 

Let it then be remembered that not one of all 
these thousands fails to make more or less of his 
fellow-men intemperate. Here comes in about the 
silliest talk in which even drunk men ever indulged, 
and it is apt to fall from teetotal lips. They say 
that people have only to shut their mouths and be 
a "Maine law to themselves, and all would be well!" 
It is every whit as sensible to say that salmon, by 



160 



Social Politics. 



shutting their mouths, or by keeping out of harm's 
way, might spare our legislators passing fishery 
laws ! There is always a large proportion of the 
finny tribes who steer clear of the bait and of the 
nets too, and there are always men and women who 
do so as well ; but just as certainly as there are and 
always will be a large proportion of fish not up to 
this, so there are and always will be many men and 
women in the same predicament in relation to liquor. 
There is no possibility of so enlightening every 
member of society as that the bait of liquor trading 
shall be thrown in vain ; and if it were not for 
infamous avarice and deluded sensuality, no man's 
mind could be so blinded as to doubt that an 
immediate and most urgent duty is to arrest ttte 
system of degradation where it begins, so as to save 
an ignorant and easily misled people from destruc- 
tion. The numbers drawn into drunkenness every 
year by 180,000 liquorsellers are incredible, and not 
to be measured for a moment by our police returns. 
In certain states of our police they hide everything 
they possibly can of the horrors of intemperance, and 
hence we get nothing like a fair idea of what is 
going on; but even these returns are sufficient to 
make the blood run cold in every benevolent heart. 
The heaps of helplessly drunken men and women laid 
out in our police cells on a Sabbath morning, like so 
many dead and dying fish on the land, show us, if 
we can be shown at all, how dreadfully successful 
the fishermen of liquordom constantly are. 



Who is to Blame ? 



161 



How shall we characterize the temperance efforts 
hitherto patronized by the churches and also by the 
publicans themselves ? They are like those of men 
who should go to the heap of dead and dying fish 
hauled out on the bank in order to put a few back 
into the water for decency's sake ! In addition to 
this, perhaps, they should talk to the remaining 
denizens of the water, and advise to abstinence from 
the hook ! Or, perhaps, going a little farther, they 
should be scrupulously careful as to the respectable 
character of the fishermen and their lines, so that 
fishing should not be allowed to grow a disreputable 
business ! And yet they should protest that their 
desire is to save every fish from being drawn out of 
the water ! Surely common sense would ask if they 
had not better stop the fishing by laying hands on 
the anglers ? 

And yet the greatest point of all would be as to 
whether the fish or the fishers should have the 
casting vote in the affair. Especially if the fisher- 
men and those licensing them had something like a 
hundred and fifty millions sterling annually flowing 
into their coffers as the fruit of their fishing business, 
it would be very hazardous to submit the decision 
of the case to them. What an almost infinite 
foolishness does it argue among the masses of our 
countrymen that they can be fleeced to this extent, 
and yet listen to the sapient excuses of those who 
fleece them, as if these were the perfection of 
political wisdom ! 

M 



CHAPTER XXXII. 



WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 

It is unnecessary for us to go farther in considering 
the great and destructive wrong which is now 
inflicted on the great mass of the community by the 
liquor and tobacco traffic as at present carried on. 
We must look fully in the face the great question 
as to how that wrong is to be redressed, and in 
doing so we must look at the matter in its found- 
ations. Perhaps it is the best that a set of 
timeservers can do, even at the head of a British 
Empire, to legislate as the state of mind in Par- 
liament will allow ; but it is the part of the people 
to find fresh legislators, if the state of those now 
in power is incompatible with righteous measures ; 
and it is the duty of those who would instruct their 
fellow-creatures to show what ought to be done, 
and what will be done as soon as the mass of the 
constituency resolve that so it shall be. 

We shall find it impossible logically to begin 
short of putting down the abuse of the land. It 
will be necessary to make the man who lays down 
his fields in barley, for the express purpose of 
selling the grain to the liquor maker, feel that he 
is farming in antagonism to the weal of society, and 
that it is necessary that society should place itself 



What is to be Done ? 



163 



in antagonism to him. Till it is believed to be a 
crime against the community to devote as much 
arable land as is in all Scotland to the raisins of 
intoxicating drink, so that such a crime will be 
placed in its true position, we shall not have got to 
the bottom of the affair with a radical cure. But 
this will come far more strongly upon the owners 
of property than upon mere tenants. The man 
who gives surface, or houseroom, to the distiller, 
brewer, or publican, will be the party most easily 
and justly reached by law when men become duly 
awake to this vast wrong. If our present author- 
ities cared a straw for the suppression of illicit 
liquor selling and brothel keeping, they would 
forfeit to the state every room let for these 
purposes. The owner of property who will take 
money in order that his property may be used 
against the public weal, is unworthy of that 
ownership, and in true law would be denuded of his 
claims to all property so abused. Men will have 
no difficulty on this point so soon as they really 
mean to suppress these terrible wrongs against 
mankind. The present system of dealing with 
so-called illegal matters of this kind is a transparent 
sham. A bailie, for example, wishes to see, and to 
let one or two of his friends see, through our u night 
houses." The intelligent officer of police, who is 
told off to take them through, can show all as 
■easily as he could take them through the Exchange ! 
It would be as easy to suppress every one of these 



164 



Social Politics. 



places through the owners of the property as it is 
to raise the right hand; but that is not wanted. 
Every gill of liquor, and every ounce of tobacco, 
used in these places, is so much wealth to those 
who as yet are allowed to hold the reins. But 
this must be changed, and as soon as an indignant 
people make up their minds to act for their own 
defence, it will be changed. Aye, and the change 
will begin with the oivnevs of property. That must 
be held and used for the public good, or not held 
at all. The doctrine has become essential to 
national life, and it cannot long lie in abeyance. 

The manufacturer of liquor will come next to 
the owner of the surface devoted to wrong. It is 
surely near about long enough that the masses have 
been taught to regard our distillers and brewers as 
among their benefactors. The benefaction that 
takes, in company with Government, some two 
shillings from poor drunkards for a pennyworth of 
liquor, has surely about had its day. He who takes 
the bread from the mouths of starving thousands to 
convert it into the poor drunkard's drink, must be 
placed in his proper category as a malefactor, and 
not a benefactor. At present, a man is hunted like 
a wild beast if he distil for his own profit without 
sharing his gains with an avaricious government; 
but this stipulation and its purchase of license to 
commit one of the most flagrant of wrongs must 
cease. Such a thing, some say, is hopeless with our 
present rulers. Then we must have other rulers. 



What is to be Done ? 



165 



The government of this country is of the people's 
choosing, and if the people do not choose such men 
as are capable of putting down the greatest iniquity 
of the day, they will now have themselves to 
blame. 

But the importation and sale of liquor must share 
the fate of its manufacture. Smuggling is next to 
obsolete now, because it is so highly the interest of 
rulers in this country to suppress it. It requires 
only a similar vigilance in the interests of society to 
that now in the interests of rulers, in order to its 
being impossible to carry on the trade in liquor in 
any form. It is absurd in a high, if not in the 
highest, degree to imagine that, under a system 
under which it is each j^ear increasing, the ruinous 
traffic to which we are calling attention is to be 
removed. There must be a downright honest effort 
to put the monstrous system down, if we are ever to 
be delivered from it. 



166 



CHAPTEK XXXIII. 

owners' rights. 

In the present state of society in the United 
Kingdom, it is necessary to establish the right of 
any movement in order to its success. This is so 
far a happy social condition. It is, however, still 
only too manifest that the right on one side is very 
much more embodied in law than that right on 
another side. The owner of land has a power in 
virtue of that ownership which is denied to the 
owner of life in virtue of his ownership. Let us 
look in this chapter to the legalized claim of the 
owners of land in relation to the liquor traffic. 
So far as we have heard, no one thinks of com- 
plaining against proprietors who, to so great an 
extent, have banished the traffic in strong drink 
from their neighbourhoods. Some may, perhaps, 
regard their action as rather severe and arbitrary; 
but no one proposes to dispute their legal right to do 
as they have done. The law, at least, fully protects 
them from all interference in the matter. Those 
feuers, for example, on the Grange estate in 
Edinburgh, — many of them spirit-dealers who have 
got the money with which they have built fine villas 
on that estate by spirit-dealing,— who have clauses 
in their feu-contracts forbidding, in all timQ coming. 



inters Rights. 



the sale of intoxicating liquor on that property — no 
one questions either the right or the wisdom of such 
a prohibition. The estate is laid out for villas, and 
to open a public-house in one of those beautiful rows 
would go far to damage the property over the whole 
estate of the Grange. To live at some considerable 
distance from a liquor-shop is a privilege which 
even the liquor-seller values highly. And when he 
is able to plant his villa in such a locality as the 
Grange, he takes as good care as other men that no 
one shall destroy its amenity by opening such a 
nuisance as a tavern in the vicinity. However 
much some may laugh at his inconsistency, no one 
will question either his legal right or his good sense 
in thus effectually prohibiting his own business from 
encroaching upon the neighbourhood of his home. 
As a proprietor of land he has this power in law. 
and he uses it wisely. Our Home Secretary, who 
speaks of the "injustice" of giving two-thirds of 
the ratepayers in a district the legal power to do 
for their homes what these very spirit-dealing pro- 
prietors do for theirs, has no idea that the prohibition 
by owners of land is an injustice. The proprietor 
who banishes the liquor-shop from his estate, merely 
because his coachman gets tipsy in that house, 
commits no injustice in Mr. Bruce's eyes, and needs 
no action of the "government" to restrain him; 
though any number of the poor who own no land or 
houses, and who are ruined by the influence of the 
liquor-seller on their families, would commit an 



168 



Social Politics. 



"injustice," which the "government" must not allow, 
should they suppress the grand cause of their misery. 
We must look this matter fairly in the face, and 
study it thoroughly. It is clearly part of our law 
which no government can alter, that owners of pro- 
perty may prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquor on 
that property, however extensive it may be. The 
Duke of Argyll, for instance, may prohibit such 
sale in the island of Tiree, and our Home Secretary 
will never so much as dream of rendering such 
prohibition illegal, or of calling it " injustice." We 
are disposed to reiterate this truth, because it is one 
of very great moment in our present controversy. 
It goes to demonstrate that there is no " injustice " 
in the prohibition of the liquor traffic considered in 
itself. It is worthy of all legal protection if it is the 
doing of landowners on their own land. No one 
imagines such a thing as a bill to compel the Grange 
feuers to allow a liquor-shop to be opened among 
them for the accommodation of drinkers. This is a 
point of incalculable importance. All talk about 
the essential tyranny of prohibition is talk only, 
and heartless talk too, so long as it is conceded as 
both legal and just that more than twelve hundred 
parishes in Britain are cleared of liquor-shops now, 
by the will of the landowners over these parishes. 
That never can be an injustice or an oppression in 
itself which may be legally and justly done by any 
one. Yet this very thing is legally and justly done 
by many thousands — only these are owners of land. 



Owners' Rights. 



169 



Does it then become an injustice and an oppression 
when it is done by those who are not owners of 
land ? One man legally, and without any injustice, 
removes the traffic from among hundreds because he 
owns the soil on which they live ; is it an injustice 
if two men, for the protection of themselves and 
their families, remove it from within the reach of 
one, merely because these two men do not own land ? 

This question gives rise to reflections which must 
now assume an importance such as they have not 
had hitherto in these realms. Up till 1832 the 
people of this country were governed exclusively by 
the owners of land. Up to this present we have 
been governed exclusively by the owners of property , 
though that property was not exclusively land. 
Now the predominant voice in the empire is that of 
those who own neither land nor property in any 
great measure. The actually dominant class now 
are owners chiefly of wives and children, with 
heads and hands consecrated to their welfare. The 
dominant right hitherto in the empire has been that 

oivners, — that right now is the right of occupii r». 
He is a blind man who does not see this, and he is 
not a wise man who does not make up his mind for 
its consequences. When the farmers in last election 
turned the Earl of Dalkeith out of Parliament, and 
that prince of Scottish landowners, his father, felt 
the mortification natural to a truly fatherly man at 
such a time, was he not blind if he saw not that 
another hand than that of the landowner now holds 



170 



Social Politics. 



the sceptre in Scotland ? When the farmers in 
Perthshire set aside one of the noblest of landowners 
in a similar way, did not he see the change ? And 
though some of our most worthy and liberal legisla- 
tors still are owners of land and of other property to 
a large extent, who does not see that they occupy 
their seats in the House of Commons, not by means 
of, but in spite of the large owners in the country ? 
The Prime Minister himself is no exception to this. 
He is the rejected of South Lancashire, and the 
elected of Greenwich ! Now, then, is the time for 
the discussion of rights that can no longer be allowed 
on one side and disallowed on the other. We 
cannot, even if we would, let owners of land claim 
a monopoly of such a privilege as that of legally 
prohibiting a traffic which is a nuisance to them, 
and deny, at the same time, occupiers the same 
legalized right of prohibiting that same traffic, while 
it is an almost infinitely greater nuisance to them. 
Sir Wilfrid Lawson is the representative of the rights 
of occupiers in this matter in the House of Commons. 
The Home Secretary is the representative of the 
exclusive privilege of owners. The one is the 
advocate of popular rights, the other is, in reality, 
the advocate of a proprietary monopoly. The one 
is a man of the opening era, the other is a man of 
the past. In Sir Wilfrid's mind those who ow r n 
nothing but their wives and families have prohibitory 
rights as dear as those who own thousands of acres ; 
and he has taken up the advocacy of their rights 



Owners' Rigid*. 



171 



as his life-work. Mr. Bruce sees not one of these 
rights — he sees only those of the classes hitherto 
dominant, but dominant no longer; and he denounces 
as an injustice on the part of two-thirds of the 
community that which he upholds as the right of 
one man — only because they are but occupiers, and 
he is an owner. 

It would surely be a gross mistake to imagine that 
ownership of land gives a peculiar right to protec- 
tion from an evil, and that the ownership of life, 
and of other living beings, gives no such right. If a 
man is the rightful owner of land, he is entitled to 
protection in the rightful use of his property; but on 
the same principle is the owner of anything else. 
It is therefore a great step in the direction of social 
deliverance from a great curse that the law enables 
proprietors to clear it out of their houses and off 
their lands. 



CHAPTER XXXIY. 



occupiers' rights. 



We come now to consider the right of that part of 
society which occupies but does not own any land. 
Before we can take up this, however, it would seem 
well (as we have strongly now before us the legalized 
right of a small minority) to consider the question 
of right as that stands related to the points of 
majority and minority. It is a favourite doctrine 
of those who oppose the demand of two-thirds of the 
ratepayers to prohibit the sale of liquor in a parish, 
that such prohibition would be a tyranny of a 
majority over a minority which justice could not 
sanction. Tom and Dick, it is argued, have no right 
to say to Harry that he shall not have a convenient 
public-house because they are two-thirds and he 
is only one-third of the party interested in the 
business. If, it is admitted, Harry owns the land 
on which the trio live, he has the right to say to 
Tom and Dick that they shall not buy liquor there, 
however inconvenient the matter may prove to 
them. Being in the majority, in fact, is held to be 
nothing in the way of right, and ownership to be 
everything. It is worth while to illustrate this point 
somewhat fully. We happen to know an island 
which has a population of some thousand souls, but 



Occupiers 9 Bights. 



17:1 



is the property exclusively of one man. Two places 
for the common sale of liquor used to be licensed on 
that island, in spite of the remonstrances of the vast 
majority of the people. The landlord of the island 
was a most kind and considerate man, and at last 
he consented to suppress one of the licenses. This 
made matters considerably more profitable for the 
man who owned the remaining house, but not a 
whit better for the people. Still they remonstrated ; 
but in vain. Their young men were led into 
drunken habits in this licensed house; but, on tlx* 
ground that there ought to be a place for the sale of 
liquor on the island, they were refused all redress. 
At length the landowner took a special interest in 
two or three of the more promising young men of 
the place, and meant to make something worth while 
of them. These young men were caught in the 
publican's trap, and began to come home in the 
morning instead of in the evening, not at all the 
better for their night's patronage of the publican. 
The leading heads of families had now their oppor- 
tunity, and they sent a deputation to the landowner, 
informing him of how his good designs were being 
frustrated. He suppressed the license at once. It 
was nothing that any number of fathers and mothers 
should have their hopes blasted merely that some 
thirsty soul should have his glass, but it was every- 
thing if the proteges of the proprietor of the land 
should be in danger of becoming a disappointment. 
Now, is it possible, in the state of politics which at 



174 



Social Politics. 



length prevails, that such cases as this should fail to 
raise effective questions of right between man and 
man, and especially between the minority which 
has ceased to rule and that majority which has 
taken its place in the seat of power ? No man who 
is less than hopelessly blind to the great political 
change which has recently taken place can shut his 
eyes to the urgency with which such questions will 
now demand consideration and settlement. You 
speak of the injustice of majorities in such a matter 
as that now before us ; but here is a case (and it is 
one of thousands) in which one vote takes the liquor 
sale away from among many hundreds. Is the sole 
right of the landowner so potent that he legally 
sets at defiance the claims of thousands ; and are the 
rights of occupiers so worthless that thousands of 
their votes can weigh as nothing against that of 
even one ? Is it likely that a constituency, the vast 
majority of whom are occupiers and not owners, will 
long consent to answer this question in the affirma- 
tive ? Is there a spirit of bondage low enough in 
the constituencies of Great Britain and Ireland to 
allow these constituencies long to adhere to the law 
in that state in which it proclaims the voice of one 
man omnipotent in a social question like this against 
the voices of any number who are immeasurably 
more deeply concerned in it than he ? It may, no 
doubt, be said that these questions broach revolu- 
tionary doctrines, that they smell of communism, 
and all that sort of thing ; but it is only absurd to 



Occupiers Rigid*. 



175 



talk so. The questions are forced on us by those 
who insist on the absolute supremacy of the mere 
landowner in a matter in which it is not the owner, 
but the occupier, who is not an owner, who has the 
chief stake. There are two fathers, who have 
families of sons and daughters as dear to them as 
.any can be. They see that the seductions of the 
public-house are proving too much for their grown- 
up young people. They petition the "justices;" but 
all in vain. Their landlord finds his gamekeeper 
rather out of sorts with liquor when he wants his 
services — he suppresses the license. The fathers 
may be ten instead of two — they may be ten times 
ten; but it is all one to the "justices"! The land- 
lord is only one man with interests in the case 
almost infinitely inferior to theirs, but he suppresses 
.at once ! He does not need to consult the "justices " ! 
He is in the minority ; but that goes for nothing ! 
All this is in perfect accordance with a constitution 
in which owners alone have legalized lights, and in 
which occupiers have no voice in the legislation and 
government of the realm; but it is absurd in the 
extreme when every householder has his fair share 
in the choice of the supreme council of the empire. 
Where the majority have the power they will 
deserve to be drunken slaves if they fail to demand 
the same right to protect themselves and their 
children from overpowering temptations as is now 
enjoyed by the owners of land in their smallest 
minorities. 



176 Social Politics, 

But this leads us to the true doctrine of the 
majority in relation to the minority. In considering 
this, we are not called upon to speak of the actual 
right of the occupier as related to that of the owner. 
We have not yet entered on the direct consideration 
of the right of the occupier at all ; but we see that 
majority and minority are alike disregarded in the 
matter of landowners' right to suppress the liquor 
traffic. It has just as little to do in the matter of 
occupiers' right to have such a traffic suppressed. 
Actual right is never a matter of majority, nor is it 
one of minority. Neither is it a matter of land- 
owning, nor is it one of land-occupying without 
owning. The actual right of an individual man can 
never be affected in its nature by the number or 
social position of his fellow-men. If a man has a, 
right to sell intoxicating liquor to his fellow- 
creatures, no majority, however great, can nullify 
that right ; and if a man has the right to have the 
temptation and nuisance of a public-house removed 
from his neighbourhood, no power on earth can 
righteously license that abomination there. The 
majority which should consist of everybody but 
himself, would only commit the greater wrong who 
should place that fruitful source of all evil near that 
man's home because they happen to be in so great a 
majority. He is sadly mistaken who thinks that 
the United Kingdom Alliance prosecutes its great 
object as a matter, the right of which depends on 
the will of a majority. The Irish Church Bill is. 



Occupiers Mights. 



177 



carried through the House of Commons by above a 
hundred of majority. The Permissive Bill of Sir 
Wilfrid Lawson is thrown out by a similar majority. 
What Alliance man imagines that this is proof of 
the right in the one case, and of the wrong in the 
other ? We repeat — majority and minority have 
nothing to do with the actual right. And yet, who 
does not see that majorities in the long run must 
decide what shall be the laiv ? 

Where, then, is the true place for majorities and 
minorities in their effective relation to each other ? 
Simply where those who have equally precious 
individual rights are not all of one mind as to what 
these rights are. In all such cases the majority 
must decide what shall be actually done. The 
minority will in such cases think itself in the right ; 
and the majority will think itself in the right; but 
the question, when it comes, is not what is right, but 
what is to be done \ Which judgment is to prevail I 
Beyond all sane questioning, it must be the vote of 
the majority that must be followed out. That vote 
may be mistaken, but it is in the experience of the 
world that the voice of the majority fairly taken is 
the most safe in all truly debated affairs ; and hence 
it is always followed. If as many as two-thirds of 
the householders in any neighbourhood conclude 
that it would rid all concerned of a vile curse to put 
away the liquor traffic from that neighbourhood, he 
is a hardy champion of drink who will insist that 
their judgment ought to be disregarded. And what 

N 



178 



Social Politics. 



is perhaps better to our purpose, he is utterly foolish 
who imagines that, when every householder is in 
possession of a vote in the election of the legislature 
itself, a majority of such voters will long keep men 
in St. Stephens who deny them so important a 
privilege as that of ridding the neighbourhood of 
their homes of the nuisance of the liquor traffic. 

We come now to the question of right on 
the part of occupiers who are not owners of land — 
that is, to the rights of all members of society, 
irrespective of ownership of the surface on which 
that society exists. We can barely broach the 
most fundamental of these without encroaching upon 
questions that are of the most delicate character as 
our country now stands. For example, if a human 
being is to exist at all, he must have leave to be 
somewhere on the surface of the globe ; but this very 
self-evident truth touches in its vitals the imaginary 
right of "eviction" by the owners of land. It com- 
pels a logical and honest mind to look at the 
"clearances" that have been made over many 
hundreds of square miles, on which human beings 
are refused space on which to exist, in order that 
other beings may have scope to thrive where men 
have for ages thriven. It will be very difficult, no 
doubt, to convince a landowner that he has not 
absolute title to his land; and that the claim to exist, 
on the part of his fellow-men, who have no land, 
limits his ridtit. But it is not the conviction that 
makes the truth, nor is it the conviction of the 



Occupiers' Rigid*. 



179 



owners of land which is henceforth to make our law. 
It is rather the conviction of occupiers than that of 
owners which is dominant, as Ave must often repeat ; 
and hence it is of vast moment that on all sides the 
truth as to real right should be fully known. Why 
should any man shut his eyes to the manifest verity 
that the right of eviction on the part of owners of 
land is a limited right ? If even bare existence is a 
right of every human being born into this world, 
then space on the earth's surface to live on is as 
certainlv the right of that human beino;: and he who 
owns that surface should remember that there is 
a Superior above the Queen, to whom every land- 
owner is responsible. 

But even in order to existence, more is absolutely 
necessary than mere space on the surface of the 
land. Food, clothing, and shelter are as essential to 
bare life as space on the earth. If it is rendered 
impossible for any one to find adequate food, clothing, 
and shelter, he might as well be put to deatli at 
once. If any man, by owning the land, had the 
right to destroy the produce of that land, so that 
his fellow-creatures could not procure adequate food, 
clothing, and shelter, then that landowner would 
have the right to put these people to death. If they 
have the right to live, then they have the right to 
insist that the land and its produce shall be, to a 
certain extent, accessible to them. We cannot doubt 
that this palpable truth raises political questions of 
the most vital character, and that the answers which 



180 



Social Politics. 



those questions must receive will not agree with the 
notions that mould our present law-making; but 
there is no escaping from their cogency. They 
must be raised, and answered too. If the masses 
submit to be killed off as they are at present by the 
action of those who should nourish and cherish 
them, and that when the legislature of the realm is 
of their choosing, we can only say that they deserve 
to perish. But we have no fear for them. The 
truth must now come into action. Here, then, we 
insist that bare existence to the mass of society is- 
impossible if the present system of licensed liquor 
traffic goes on. Such food, clothing, and whole- 
some shelter as are essential to bare life cannot 
possibly be enjoyed by the whole people if that 
system continues. Let us be careful, however,, 
and not make such an assertion without adequate 
proof. We deal here with the manufacture of 
intoxicating liquor, and the destruction of food in 
that manufacture. That food is the produce of 
land, owned by a small minority of the human race,, 
and is the property, in the first instance, of these 
landowners ; but, in the nature of things, if that food 
is not to reach the mouths of the masses as whole- 
some nourishment, they must die. If they have a 
right to live, they have a right to insist that it shall 
so reach them. What, then, is the present state 
of the case ? In 1868, the grain used in the 
manufacture of intoxicating liquor amounted a& 
we have seen to 60,000,000 bushels of as good 



Occupier* Rights. 



181 



and wholesome food as man or beast need desire 
to consume. We have the best authority for 
.asserting that this immense consumption of -rain 
produced neither food, clothing, nor shelter for 
any human being. Now, our question at this 
point goes to the very core of the subject in hand — 
Have those who own the land, and consequently 
the bread of the country, a right to use that land 
and food in this way ? Then they have the right to 
starve the people to death if they so choose ! If 
they may destroy this immense quantity of food, 
they may, of course, destroy double or treble the 
quantity, and so put to death any number of the 
population! Have they the right to do so? Who 
does not see that no man can have the right to do 
that which involves of necessity the death of hie 
fellow-men ? And who can contemplate the destruc- 
tion of such a mass of grain as this in twelve months, 
amid a people thousands on thousands of whom are 
starving for bread, without seeing that, instead of 
exercising a right which the law is bound to respect, 
those who destroy this grain are commiting a crime 
which, if law is not to remain a sham, it must 
restrain? If society has no right to restrain this, 
then it follows that society, as such, has no right to 
bare existence in the country, or on earth ! 

But, as we have said, mankind have a right to 
more than food if they have a right to live. In this 
climate, at least, they cannot even live without 
suitable clothing and shelter. In the present state 



182 



Social Politics. 



of tlie liquor traffic, it is impossible they can have 
these. That same minority who are now responsible 
for the licensed destruction of the grain we have 
mentioned, are responsible for an expenditure of far 
above a hundred million sterling a year on drink. 
This enormous sum represents labour chiefly; it is 
composed in by far its largest proportion of the 
wages of the labouring classes. Every one knows 
how the classes above the labouring millions plume 
themselves on the absence of drunkenness from their 
social circles; and all who know the truth of the 
case know that the immense sum to which we now 
direct attention is made up, in more than nine-tenths 
of its total magnitude, of money spent on liquor by 
those who can least afford so to spend. This money 
is drawn from the mass of the people by a seductive 
system of traffic which is manifestly irresistible in 
its fascinating power over many, many thousands 
in any large population among whom it is introduced. 
It has a much more powerful fascination than 
gambling, which is suppressed now by the imperative 
will of the state. Our assertion is, that with above 
a hundred and fifty millions a year all spent on 
liquor and tobacco, it is utterly impossible that the 
people, as a whole, can be adequately clothed and 
sheltered. We have, as we have seen, districts on 
which above 600 persons sleep on the square acre of 
surface as the result of its being utterly impossible 
that such classes can pay for both drink and house- 
room. We have far more numerous districts in 



Occupiers Rigid*. 



183 



which, though the crowding is not so fearful, it is 
sufficient to secure a death-rate more than fourfold 
— and even more than sixfold — what it ought to be. 
These multitudes are actually clothed in "filthy 
rags," and it is impossible, with a drain like that 
before us, they can be otherwise clad. Is there a 
man living who will insist that any government on 
earth has a right to treat its subjects in the way in 
which the license and revenue laws now treat the 
drinking thousands of our fellow-countrymen ? As 
much as a shilling is taken now for less than two- 
thirds of a pennyworth of liquor from our labouring 
masses by the liquor-trading class, who have the 
sanction of Government to the robbery, on condition 
that the ruling class has the lion's share of the prey ! 
Is this the result of a right ? This incredible robbery 
is actually putting to death a large portion of the 
infancy of the nation, because of the impossibility 
of those robbed to provide for their offspring. Have 
men a right to do this ? Does the ownership of 
land, or of money, or of Governmental authority, 
give men a right, if they so choose, to carry on a 
traffic which thus withers in the bud a vast number 
of those who would otherwise be the productive 
people of future generations ? Has no one but a 
landowner on his own land a right to say this shall 
be made to cease ? 



184 



CHAPTER XXXV. 
PALLIATIVE MEASURES. 

One of the most instructive aspects of the present 
and past in the liquor traffic is presented by the 
results of efforts to lessen the evil effects of the 
business. Not far from five hundred Acts of Parlia- 
ment have been passed with this benevolent object 
in view ! Legislative patience and perseverance in 
the case seem utterly inexhaustible ! Alas for 
human nature, these legislative virtues are only 
too easily explained on very commonplace theories. 
Political and philosophic men are found in sturdy 
combat with a view to decide whether alcoholic 
thirst is increasing or abating — or whether alcohol 
is being consumed per head of the population in a 
greater or less degree, while both seem oblivious 
to the truth that you may beggar a man on half 
the drink as fast as upon the whole if you more 
than double the money which you take out of him 
for the stuff. 

Let us see how the case stands when we go back 
to about 1850, before the idea of raising the duty 
on spirits took much effect in legislation. Whisky 
was then sold over the counter at threepence a gill, 
the same as is now sold at sixpence. We have 
tables supplied by Government before us giving us 



Palliative Mea&ures. 



185 



the progress of affairs in this matter from the year 
1851 up to 1869. These tables enable us to sec the 
rapid rate at which the spirit bill of the masses 
has been effectually doubled in amount. In 1853, 
£590,000 was laid on — in 1854 (foreign spirits . 
£16,694, and (home spirits) £450,000, at the same 
time that £2,450,000 was taken as a war tax on malt. 
In 1855 (colonial spirits), £25,546, and £1,000,000 
(home spirits). In 1858 (colonial), £9,000, and 
(home spirits) £280,000. In 1860 (British colonial), 
£357,966, and (home spirits) £1,000,000, besides 
licenses to the amount of £75,000. In 1861 little 
was done, nor in the following years was much 
added, but the annual duty from spirits (foreign 
and home) had risen from £7,562,461 in 18 5 2 to 
£15,189,545 in 1869 — that is, the income from this 
deplorable business, in this one department of 
spirits, has more than doubled — and as the price 
has doubled, the profits of those who are engaged 
in it have something like doubled also. 

If we look at the consumption per head of the 
population this result very clearly appears. In 
1853, the amount of spirits returned for home 
consumption was 1*1 gallons per head; in 1867 
it was 0*98 of a gallon. But we are here comparing 
a prosperous with an unusually dull year. If we 
take 1855 and compare it with 1867, there is a 
decrease of only two hundredths of a gallon 
per head. We shall see, when we loot to the 
malt, that the whole decrease is more than made 



186 



Social Politics. 



up by the increase in beer ; but the truth is, that 
if the population were taken by census instead of 
being " estimated/' there would be no decrease 
seen at all. We are shut up to the conclusion that 
the effect of a high duty imposed on spirits has 
been to double the ruinous expenditure of the 
masses who consume them in this deplorable way. 
It has risen from less than £20,000,000 a year to 
above £40,000,000. This is a curious way of 
mitigating the terrible poverty of the masses, so 
as to remove the evils of intemperance. It surely 
teaches us that our statesmen are strangely incapable 
of the trust committed to them, or it teaches us 
something which we should be still more slow to 
believe. Here is a course, proceeded with now 
for fifteen years at least, in which the one result is 
to increase the expenditure of the mass of the 
people to double the amount, while all the evils 
incident to liquor are, to say the least, as rampant 
as ever they were. 

The case appears much more flagrant still when 
we turn to the consumption of malt. With the 
exception of the war tax, to which we have already 
alluded, the duty on malt has not been increased 
for many years, standing at 2s. 8|d. a bushel ; but 
in the ten years from 1857 to 1866 inclusive, the 
amount charged with duty had risen from 39,127,388 
to 50,163,487 bushels. Every bushel of that malt 
represents about thirty-six shillings taken from the 
drinker of the liquor who pays for it in the ordinary 



Palliative Measun & 



187 



way; take it at thirty-five shillings, and you have 
£19,864,978 added to the annual sum paid for 
drink of this nature under the ameliorating influence 
of " remedial measures" for the evils that are now 
draining away the last resources of the masses ! 
The drinker pays at least sixpence a quart for such 
liquor as is made at the rate of two bushels of malt 
to the barrel of ale (that is the barrel of 36 gallons) ; 
and, calculated at that moderate price, the above 
is a great way below the annual addition made to 
his liquor outlay in ten years. This is surely the 
wrong way to mitigate the recklessness of the 
multitude, and to "raise their moral tone" so that 
they shall be less liable to the seductions of the 
beer shops; and yet men of high standing do assure 
us that the right thing is being done ! 

We must look at the tobacco outlay in the same 
aspect. No one will contend that there is any 
lessening of the amount consumed so far as this 
narcotic is concerned; but few consider the rate at 
which the poverty of the masses is being hastened 
to a terrible crisis by the expenditure caused by it. 
From 1853 to 1869, the yearly amount of tobacco 
entered for home consumption has risen from 
29,564,695 lbs. to 41,719,500 lbs.— that is, an addition 
of 12,154,805 lbs. in that time. After the water is 
added, and the price paid for so much of it above 
threepence an ounce, is taken into account, we must 
calculate this at not less than six shillings a pound 
weight of the imported article. The Scotch tobacco- 



188 



Social Politics. 



nists profess to work at the rate of 40 per cent, of 
water, but a spinner tells us that he has spun it at 
the rate of 53 per cent, with his own hands. We 
are, when we consider all expense for pipes, lighters, 
&c, under the truth in taking the cost to the users 
at six shillings a pound. This is, then, an addition 
to the annual outlay, chiefly to the class least able 
to give it, of £3,646,441. 

If we add these large additions to one another, we 
see how the measures at present in vogue are help- 
ing the masses of the people out of their deplorable 
condition ! The sum is not less than £34,000,000 a 
year ! It will be observed that in this we are 
neither taking in the wine of the upper class, nor 
are we counting the high price of their cigars. We 
are looking to the expenditure which is almost 
exclusively that of the toiling millions whose con- 
dition it is imagined has been ameliorated by the 
measures that have been applied. Surely it is 
time that we should open our eyes on the dread- 
ful deception which is being practised in so-called 
"remedial measures." The number of licensed 
public houses reduced by more than a half of 
their number, as is the case with Glasgow, only 
throws the liquor trade into abler hands, and 
makes it more effective in robbing the masses. 
Restrictions as to hours of sale, and Sunday 
closings, have been demonstrated to be perfectly 
consistent with the vast increase of money-drain 
to which we here direct attention. Sanitary laws 



Palliative Meam res. 



189 



against overcrowding are simply so much waste 
paper, unless the state pay the rents which the 
liquor traffic has rendered the masses incapal >le ( >f 
paying. Punishments for intoxication, and for 
supplying the intoxicated with liquor, are all mere 
trifling when considered beside the enormous 
increase in swindled money constantly going on. 
It is the dreadful depression of condition which is 
the absolutely necessary effect of such an enormous 
robbery that lies at the root of all the social misery 
of the drink system. The poorer a man becomes, 
and the more hopeless, he becomes also the more 
reckless of all the consequences of his conduct ; and 
unless we are prepared to cause this great robbery 
in money to cease, we may save ourselves the 
trouble of all patchwork, such as deals with mere 
twigs of the great Upas. There is no choice left 
to those who would deal honestly with this great 
wrong but that of cutting it down. Whether it is 
to be by the initiative of the rulers, or by the 
popular vote, that the work is actually to be done 
this is what must be done, if the nation is to be 
saved. Time may be wasted, and a greater depth 
of social degradation reached by such measures as 
make a show of palliation; but so vigorous is the 
vitality in the system that it will laugh to scorn 
all that fails to deal with it as a capital crime against 
the social weal. 



190 



CHAPTER XXXYI. 
THE DUTY OF WORKING MEN. 

We think that we have sufficiently shown that, 
one way or other, the liquor traffic at least must 
be suppressed. Measures such as will not merely 
seem fitted for such a suppression, but such as shall 
be so fitted indeed, must be carried through. We 
have also shown the right of the mass of the people 
to have such work done by those who bear rule 
over them. One important matter still remains 
to be considered. That is, the duty to be discharged 
by those who are specially affected by this terrible 
wrong, if they would be delivered. 

The United Kingdom Alliance has done, and will 
yet do, great things in its proper sphere. So have 
kindred associations done good, and so w r ill they, 
too, continue to do most important work. The 
grand task of the Alliance and its helpers has 
been to enlighten public thought — specially in what 
may be called the political portion of society, and 
no work ever undertaken has been better or more 
jzealously done. Parliament has felt, and will yet 
feel more effectually, the force of the Alliance. So 
has the Government, and so will it more fully in 
days to come. 

But there are duties of vast importance which no 



The Duty of Working Mi >> . 



191 



society of the nature of the Alliance can possibly 
discharge — duties which working men can easily 
perform if they are so disposed. The Good Tem- 
plars are setting an example in at least preparing 
for the discharge of these duties. They arc taking 
up the cause of the entire suppression of the liquor 
traffic, on the principle that every man must do his 
part in that work personally and not by proxy. A 
paid agency is of the highest possible importance 
within certain limits, and the Good Templars show 
that they understand this; but when all the personal 
work to be done is left to paid agents in a matter 
of this character, these very agents are next to help- 
less. The money which might be sufficient to pay 
an adequate force in doing such work as is required 
now, is all gone, long since, into the hands of those 
who are opposed to everything that can really lessen 
or limit this terrible business. It is consequently 
impossible to do anything considerable beyond 
leading on the forces by mere money power. But 
the capacity for work has not gone with the money. 
That capacity still remains, and remains in such 
force that it has only to be organized and brought 
into action in order to the defeat of all the agency 
the enemy can possibly employ. This is just what 
the Good Templars are most effectually accom- 
plishing. Some of our Electoral Associations and 
Alliance Auxiliaries are doing the same thing, though 
perhaps not on so perfect a method. Men who feel 
the vast importance of the effort are giving time 



192 



Social Politics. 



and personal toil, though not able to give money, 
and are doing wonders. This sort of agency has 
only to be extended in order to its being made sure 
that every man belonging to the now sufferings 
orders shall know his duty in relation to this horrid 
system of legalized plunder. 

What are called our Trades' Unions have a work 
to do here. It is infinite folly for men to organize 
their strength against those who supply them with 
the capital necessary to the success of labour, and 
to guard against every semblance of encroachment 
on the part of these men, while they leave in full 
play a robbery that deprives them of all chance 
of ever having any capital of their own. So is it 
infinite folly to talk of " co-operation " while they 
are co-operating with the publican and tobacconist 
to keep themselves and families so poor that co- 
operation on any really effective scale is utterly out 
of the question. Even if they will drink, and smoke 
too, is it not folly to pay one and even two shillings 
for a pennyworth of the stuff they consume at the 
very time when they are opposing to the death 
every shadow of reduction in their wages ? A 
Trades' Council advising men to stand out all but 
to the starvation point against a reduction of a 
shilling a week or so, and keeping silence on a 
system that takes at the rate of ten shillings a 
week from every working family in the United 
Kingdom, is a frightful anomaly. Such a thing 
must cease to be possible by its being so fully 



The Duty of Working Men. 



193 



exposed as to make men ashamed of it. This 
exposure must be effected by the agency of work- 
ing men themselves. As a rule, they will not 
listen to others on such a subject as this. The few 
who will listen, and who are getting light, must 
teach those who will not give ear to any but their 
fellows. The man who will continue to give two 
shillings for a pennyworth of drink, and a shilling 
for a pennyworth of tobacco, is the true " black leg," 
and he must be made to know that he is so by the 
agency of working men. The tables must be 
turned on the poor vain creatures who have hitherto 
ridiculed abstainers; and they can be so turned. 
It needs only a little manhood and the personal 
manifestation of it to accomplish the thing effec- 
tually. This manhood must be found under the 
waistcoats of working men. A working man will 
not shrink from the charge of drinking whisky, nor 
yet from that of smoking tobacco; but the dullest 
soul that ever smoked or drank, will draw him- 
self deep into his shell if convicted of paying 
two shillings, or even one, for a pennyworth of 
rubbish ! 

Right ideas of those who maintain this system of 
robbery must be got into the minds of working 
men, and that in a great measure by the efforts of 
fellow- workmen. What a sight was it to see 
masses of these noble fellows in Glasgow, at last 
election, toiling like heroes to send three men into 
Parliament who snapped their fingers in the faces 





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Social Politics. 



of their constituents, when these petitioned to vote 
them liberty to suppress the liquor traffic ! " Three 
Liberals" sent up to St. Stephens by the masses, to 
keep the tremendous incubus of this vile wrong 
tight around the neck of these very masses, in 
defiance of their petition, signed by 35,000 of their 
number ! ! We must find working men who are 
prepared personally to expose this immense mistake, 
so that it shall not be committed again. It is 
vastly better not to vote at all, than to vote Sham 
Liberals into the House of Commons, or even into a 
Municipal Council. If no man can be found with 
honesty enough in him to go to Parliament with the 
design of relieving the masses from this glaring 
wrong, it is the duty of working men to show that 
they will rather not be represented at all, than 
misrepresented by those who are prepared, above all 
things, to fleece them through these snares of liquor 
and tobacco. But we repeat that such sentiments 
must be cultivated by working men in the minds of 
their fellow-workmen. No one else can do it. 
Other men can reach a few of the more thoughtful 
of the working masses, but they reach only a few. 
These must deal with their fellows. No deliverance 
seems possible apart from that fellow-feeling which 
sways classes of human beings when influenced by 
those who form part of the class. 

Looking at things as they are, and not as they 
ought to be, we cannot hide from ourselves the 
painful truth that a portion of our labouring 



Tlte Duty of Working Men. 11).") 

masses are sadly sunk in ignorance and vice. But 
even where these amount to one fourth of the 
whole population, as it is shown they do in 
Edinburgh, we need not be staggered because one 
in four are so situated. If we have three good 
men for one bad one our heads need not hang 
down surely. We see something more difficult to 
deal with than this fourth who have been taken 
captive by the enemy — it is the curious apathy 
which characterizes even that other fourth, or 
perhaps half, who constitute the better class of 
working men. A candidate comes forward to 
contest a seat in the Town Council, and tells 
the deputations who wait upon him that he will 
certainly vote against all motions for the suppres- 
sion of the liquor traffic, and equally against all 
granting to the ratepayers of the power to 
suppress it. Another comes forward to oppose 
him, who pledges himself to do his utmost in the 
direction of deliverance. Because of some petty 
feeling in relation to the right man, four or five 
hundred working class voters stay away from the 
poll! This is a tremendous drawback on the 
cause of working men. It must be broken up, 
and that by the agency . of working men. It 
is a childishness which never appears among the 
upper classes. They know that no man is perfect, 
and that they must look to what will secure their 
grand object amid all imperfections. Till working 
men rise to somewhat of the same common-sense 



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Social Politics. 



position, they will not be represented either in 
Parliament or anywhere else. 

There is a small but noble band of upper class 
men whose eyes are open and whose hearts are 
warm in the great cause of social deliverance in 
which we have thus written. These find themselves 
sometimes awkwardly placed when mingling with 
their peers. So ever have those who have proved 
their country's hope in the day of its darkest trials. 
They have had to seek among the humbler orders 
that sympathy and aid which they have ever been 
denied among their own class. "The common people" 
have heard them gladly, but not so the higher 
orders. And yet they have been the truest friends 
of their class as well as of their kind. It is only for 
a short time that the rich can go along with a de- 
generating mass constituting the lower orders. Ruin 
comes as surely in the end to them as it does in the 
beginning to the poorest and the weakest when 
oppression is at the fountain head of wealth. The 
abstraction of a hundred and fifty millions sterling 
a year from the productive masses, with only drink 
and tobacco handed to them in return, cannot go on 
for many generations till rich and poor sink in one 
common ruin. Both the leaders and the led who 
constitute the army of rescue in this grand crusade 
will be seen, in days to come, to have been the true 
friends of all in their country. 



ALEX. M'DOUGALL, PRINTER, 60 MITCHELL STREET, GLASGOW. 



